Nano-ROOTGUARD^® BAND 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, Trifluralin®, or in the E.U. Balan® 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.

Products: GEOFLOW® products are designed to irrigate landscape below ground at the root zone. All GEOFLOW emitter products incorporate the ROOTGUARD technology. The patented process employs a preemergent called Trifluralin®, which is fused into the emitter during the molding process. When buried, a small barrier develops around the emitter which inhibits roots from entering. The barrier is engineered to last approximately twenty years.  Eliminating root intrusion allows GEOFLOW to use dripline with large turbulent flow paths and internal filters. These emitters have proven in practice to be the most resistant to soil and sediment clogging. The combination of large turbulent flow emitters ROOTGUARD finally makes subsurface irrigation reliable and easy to use in landscape and turf.