Regular on-site irrigation water testing is recommended for all production nurseries, but the limitation of this testing is it doesn’t show the amount of specific nutrients present in the water.
While water quality may fall within acceptable limits for pH and Electrical Conductivity (EC) there may be specific nutrients, or other parameters, that fall outside the range suitable for production nursery irrigation water. A full laboratory analysis is required to determine the levels of these nutrients. For example, EC, a measure of the total amount of salts in a water source, doesn't provide information on which salts are present, if the salts are beneficial or not, or if individual elements are present in excessive amounts.