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The Minister of Agriculture and Water, Antonio Cerdá, Archena Mayor, Manuel Sánchez Marcos, and president of the Community of Irrigators 'Our Lady of Hope', María del Carmen Martínez, today inaugurated the work on improving and modernizing this irrigation area comprising the municipalities of Archena, Ceuta, Villanueva del Río Segura and Alguazas.

Cerda said that the works benefit to 278 farmers and irrigators in the area and allow the implementation of drip irrigation system "in the entire irrigable area, which reaches over 300 hectares, mainly for the cultivation of apricots, which the crop in this area is the earliest of the Region, and to a lesser extent the production of citrus and vegetables.

Antonio Cerdá highlighted the initiative of the irrigators to promote the refurbishment of irrigation infrastructure and "avoid water loss, and highlighted the economic effort been made to" further the objectives of improving irrigation and water resource use. "

The works, which have been implemented in three distinct phases, has received an investment of 2.9 billion euros, of which 1.4 million have been funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water.

GPS system for irrigation management

The investment plan has considered the construction of a reservoir of 35,000 cubic meters and water lines needed to distribute it among fields of irrigation and to supply their crops.

It has also implemented an automation system via GPRS to the programming and management of irrigation, with the aim to "control the volume of water consumed by each irrigator" said the counselor.

The owner of Agriculture said that the Region of Murcia is a modern drip irrigation, "and recalled that the modernization of irrigation has now reached 87 percent of the irrigable area regional versus 40 percent of the national average.

The Minister of Agriculture and Water noted that "agriculture in Murcia that less water is consumed in Spain", with only 3.4 percent of irrigation water throughout the country, and yet, he said, "is the export more. "

He further stressed that the farmers use their water Murcia "can not be more optimistic" and added that regional agriculture "is one the best examples in the Murcia efficient management of this resource do."

Source: CARM