Irrigation Control With AROYA

Introducing Cannabis Irrigation Scheduling with AROYA + OpenSprinkler

Humans have been growing cannabis for millennia. The limits of prohibition have long inspired tenacious cultivators to answer the question, “Does cannabis like drip irrigation?” by simply diving head first into designing irrigation systems tailored to their specific circumstances. There’s a big difference between flood irrigating cannabis with water pumped from a reservoir, and managing irrigations across thousands of plants in an indoor commercial facility, but one thing’s certain: no matter the set-up – drip irrigation, container, garden – cannabis, like all plants, needs water.

When crop steering growers manipulate light, climate, and irrigation to steer their plants’ growth in a particular direction with the ultimate goal of producing consistent, replicable results that lead to maximum profitability. And to do it successfully, effective irrigation is key. During the plants’ vegetative stage, growers are tasked with eliminating environmental stressors and using each irrigation event, or shot, as a signal encouraging the plant to absorb as much water as possible. Then during the generative phase, growers apply targeted stressors and additional shots to control water uptake with the goal of boosting flower, resin, and flavor production. AROYA gives growers the data to determine how to respond to their plants’ generative and vegetative cues, while processes like regularly testing and monitoring field capacity offer guidance on how much water to give the plants and at what frequency.

For many operators, irrigating the plants with the right amount of water at the right time, every time still requires human involvement and often hours of labor. Growers who seek an automated irrigation system for cannabis cultivation are typically forced to pay 5X more than farmers in other agricultural industries – yet another frustration stemming from federal prohibition. But unless growers are able to factor data into every stage of growth for each cultivar, even the best drip irrigation system for cannabis could still be missing the water mark.

With everything there is to manage around growing cannabis –climate, light, irrigation – controllers offer growers the opportunity to multitask. In the world of commercial cannabis, irrigation controllers from OpenSprinkler have emerged as an affordable way to set and manage automatic watering. But that means growers have two platforms to manage: OpenSprinkler’s web-based app to control its functionality, and Excel to process and review the data.

Using two platforms just to manage irrigation? When growers asked for a better way, AROYA got to work.

STREAMline your irrigation

Growers who use OpenSprinkler can now manage their irrigations directly through AROYA. That means cultivators now have the ability to schedule and manage their irrigations using the same platform that tracks and monitors their plants at every stage.

Let’s get into the weeds of this new feature:

• Take time-consuming irrigations off the to-do list. AROYA now allows cultivators to schedule and manage irrigations in one room, multiple rooms, or even different zones within each room using one or more OpenSprinkler controllers. With multi-tasking like that, growers get more time to focus on other things.
• Growers set the schedules, and AROYA does the rest. Use AROYA’s intuitive interface to choose start times, durations, and frequencies for the cannabis sprinkler controllers throughout your facility. Then the platform activates irrigation events based on parameters you control.
• Dripping that’s data-driven. Growers who already use AROYA to track and monitor the data behind their grow can now create a unique scheduling template for each phase of plant growth, then attach it to harvest groups and recipes – so plants get watered based on real data, not “bro science”.
• Catch irrigation errors before it’s too late. AROYA’s alerts let users know if scheduled irrigations don’t happen – so growers have time to make fixes before it leads to costly crop loss.
• Replicate irrigation schedules with ease*. Found a watering schedule that works wonders? Working with multiple harvest groups? No need to start from zero – AROYA’s irrigation template feature lets growers replicate irrigation schedules within minutes. (*Available for Non-METRC integrated clients only)
• One platform to securely manage it all. With OpenSprinkler’s functionality fully integratedinto AROYA, growers just have one platform to work with – no need to access OpenSprinkler or Excel ever again. And the data stays safe with our built-in encrypted data protection features.

Do more with AROYA

For growers using crop-steering techniques to cultivate cannabis, automatic irrigation isn’t just a major time-saver; it’s also part of a broader strategy. Because at the end of the day, cannabis is an agricultural product, and brands that figure out how to cultivate toward certain outcomes efficiently and at scale will ultimately be the ones who succeed.

So water you waiting for? Irrigation scheduling is now available for AROYA customers!