Analyze your irrigation water quality and understand its effects on your soil and crops.
Your irrigation water might be working against your fertility program. Find out now.
Every time you irrigate, you're adding everything dissolved in your water to your soil. Over a season, this can mean thousands of pounds of minerals—good and bad—accumulating in your fields. Understanding your water quality is essential for effective fertility management.
Comprehensive water quality analysis
Affects nutrient availability and fertilizer effectiveness
Total dissolved salts affecting plant stress
Can raise soil pH and bind calcium/magnesium
Damaging to soil structure and plant tissue
Beneficial minerals but can cause scale
Essential in small amounts, toxic at higher levels
Indicates sodium damage potential
Calcium and magnesium content affecting irrigation
Issues we frequently find in California irrigation water
Locks out iron, zinc, manganese, and other micronutrients
Raises soil pH, binds beneficial cations, causes crusting
Destroys soil structure, causes compaction and poor drainage
Creates plant water stress and reduces nutrient uptake
Accumulates in plant tissue causing leaf burn
Causes toxicity symptoms in sensitive crops
Once we understand your water quality, we can recommend solutions including acidification with our Borreplex OA product, gypsum applications, modified irrigation practices, and fertilizer selection optimized for your specific water.
We recommend testing irrigation water at least annually, ideally before the growing season. If you use multiple water sources (wells, surface water, recycled), test each source separately. Water quality can change seasonally, so growers with past issues may want to test 2-3 times per year.
SAR (Sodium Adsorption Ratio) measures the relative proportion of sodium to calcium and magnesium in your water. High SAR water damages soil structure, causing compaction and poor drainage. In California, SAR above 6-9 typically requires treatment or careful management to prevent long-term soil degradation.
High bicarbonate water raises soil pH over time and can precipitate calcium and magnesium, making them unavailable to plants. This leads to micronutrient deficiencies (especially iron and zinc) and poor soil structure. Acidification with products like our Borreplex OA can neutralize bicarbonates.
Yes, but recycled water often has elevated salts, sodium, and boron that require monitoring. We can help you assess recycled water quality and develop management strategies including leaching fractions, gypsum applications, and appropriate crop selection.
In California, the biggest concerns are typically EC (salinity), bicarbonates, sodium/SAR, and boron. Central Coast groundwater often has high bicarbonates. Valley wells may have elevated boron. We tailor our analysis to your region's known water quality challenges.
Contact us to schedule water quality testing for your irrigation sources.