Brazil: Sugarcane seedling growers achieve high yields and savings with drip irrigation

In Brazil there are 9 million hectares planted with sugar cane. Approximately 15% of this total is renewed each year. This provides a planting area of over 1 million hectares. The cultivation cost varies from R$5,000.00 to R$9,000.00 per hectare, with more than 50% of this cost being spent on seedlings. Aiming to reduce costs, many production units in various regions of the country decided to invest in private nurseries. Usually the planted seedlings are produced in a period of 10 months, being possible to produce only 1 time in a cycle of 14 months. In addition, on average, 6-8 buds are produced per cane tiller. In this sense, some producers have been using drip irrigation to maximize this process and obtain several advantages. As is the example of a production unit in the region of Ribeirão Preto (SP). As positive results, they managed to reduce the production time of seedlings to 6 months, in this way it is possible to harvest seedlings twice in the 14-month cycle, producing ...