During the last few years we have made a comparison between cotton under traditional drip irrigation and low volume and low pressure drip irrigation. We have tested various irrigation treatments in both methods.

The trials were performed with 6 controls and during the growing period we followed up on the development and reaction of the cotton plants to the different treatments by measuring the daily growth rate and by using a pressure chamber. At the end of the season we compared the yields obtained under the different treatments.

We got the impression that the use of low volume and low pressure drip irrigation did not have a negative effect on plant development and it does seem possible to irrigate cotton using this system and consequently drastically lower the cost of drip irrigation when applying this system, which requires a significantly lower pressure in comparison to traditional drip irrigation.