nano-ROOTGUARD® Subsurface drip is an efficient and cost effective method to irrigate agricultural crops, landscape and turf areas and to reuse or dispose effluent water. Unfortunately, roots can clog drip emitters in systems buried below mulch or below the soil surface, and this tendency historically limited the service life of the system. Now, through a unique marriage of polymer and root-growth inhibitor, researchers at Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratories created long-term, controlled-release devices that establish a barrier zone where plant roots cannot grow.

The original devices were developed to keep tumble weed roots out of nuclear waste sites. Rodney Ruskin, Geoflow’s CEO, worked with Battelle scientists to engineer ROOTGUARD, a patented process that prevents roots from entering the emitters, specifically for subsurface drip applications. The active ingredient, Treflan®, is impregnated into each drip emitter during the molding process to direct root growth away from the drip emitter. By keeping the roots out chemically, ROOTGUARD allows Geoflow to use drip emitters with large flow paths that have proven to keep clean and clog-free. Subsurface drip irrigation systems protected with the ROOTGUARD offer all the benefits of the buried drip irrigation technology without the problem of root intrusions. Nano-ROOTGUARD is a patented Geoflow improvement which increases the expected life from 20years to 30 years.

Treflan is a registered trademark of Dow Agro Sciences ROOTGUARD is a registered trademark of A.I.Innovations.

For more information...
Biobarrier Protection by Battelle Pacific Northwest Division
A Picture of a Root–ball around a ROOTGUARD Protected Emitter
A Comparison of Techniques to Prevent Root Intrusion
Protection of Buried Drip Irrigation Devices from Root Intrusion Through Slow-Release Herbicides
Supplemental EPA label for Treflan which covers ROOTGUARD
Material Safety Data Sheet
View Geoflow movie