Hortau, Agrian to offer expansive precision irrigation service

Hortau, a provider of precision irrigation management systems and services for agriculture, recently announced a strategic partnership with Agrian Inc. to deliver an expansive precision irrigation service for commercial agriculture.

"With this partnership, Agrian will be able to offer additional services in precision irrigation to their partners," Hortau Vice President of Business Development Trevor Mecham said, "giving them the ability to provide a complete service as the growers' trusted advisor."

Founded in 2004 in Fresno, Calif., Agrian started as a cloud-based record-keeping system to help those in the Western U.S. navigate the ever-growing regulatory requirements. Agrian expanded its digital capabilities to include a platform approach to help agronomists, growers and food processors work collaboratively within one system to accomplish many tasks including food company reporting, crop planning, scouting, imagery, soil and tissue sampling, logged and wireless data transfer, variable rate, and nutrient management to create a record of each crop in every market whether in specialty fruit crops, cereal grains or oil seeds.

"Hortau's technology complements our platform in that it will help our customers meet compliance and regulatory needs in the irrigation space," said Nishan Majarian, CEO of Agrian. "By better monitoring irrigation management, it will help the industry streamline water and energy savings while increasing productivity."

Hortau's services will be offered through Agrian dealers starting during the 2018 season in the Western Region of the U.S.

"We're excited about this partnership because it continues to solidify our service, being offered through trusted advisors in the field," said Hortau CEO Jocelyn Boudreau. "In commercial agriculture, it's important to not only provide real-time data growers can use to make informed decisions, but provide that data in an easy-to-use platform."

Founded in 2002, Hortau's crop stress management service reports to growers how crops are faring in real time - before stresses such as drought or lack of aeration can have a negative impact on a crop. This proprietary, plant-centric approach measures crop stress using soil tension, ensuring optimal crop growth, and reducing water and energy consumption, as well as environmental impacts such as leaching.

Hortau was recently named to the 2017 Global Cleantech 100 Ones to Watch list, won the 2017 North American Smart Irrigation New Product Innovation Award, was a finalist for the 2017 CognitionX Best AI Product in Agriculture award, and was again named to the THRIVE AgTech Top 50 Growth companies list earlier this month.