Simcha Blass

Simcha Blass invented modern drip irrigation, a technique that has transformed agriculture in arid regions worldwide. Born in Warsaw in 1897, he was educated in Poland, served in a Jewish self-defence unit during the First World War, and trained as a hydraulic engineer before emigrating to Palestine in 1930. He worked on water supply for the Jewish settlements and became the leading water engineer of the Yishuv and later of the state, heading the water department of the Jewish Agency and then Mekorot, the national water company. He planned the National Water Carrier, which moves water from the Sea of Galilee to the arid Negev, and worked on well drilling and regional supply schemes. The observation that led to drip irrigation came in the 1930s. A friend showed him a tree growing conspicuously larger than its neighbours with no visible water source; digging revealed a leaking pipe delivering a slow drip below the surface. The tree was fed continuously and directly at the root zone, with almost nothing lost to evaporation or runoff. He could not act on it for years, because the narrow orifices needed would clog immediately. The solution came with plastics: a long, narrow, turbulent flow path moulded into an emitter, which drops the pressure over distance rather than through a tiny hole, and so resists blockage while releasing water slowly and evenly. He patented it in 1959, and in 1965 partnered with Kibbutz Hatzerim in the Negev to found Netafim, which commercialised the technology. Drip irrigation can cut water use substantially compared with flood or sprinkler methods while raising yields, and it is now used across dry regions from Spain to India and California. He died in 1982.

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