With threats of water scarcity complicating the need to feed a growing global population, it is more important than ever to get crop irrigation right.
With threats of water scarcity complicating the need to feed a growing global population, it is more important than ever to get crop irrigation right. Overwatering can deplete local water supplies and lead to polluted runoff, while underwatering can lead to sub-optimal crop performance. Yet few farmers use science-based tools to help them decide when and how much to water their crops.
A new University of Illinois-led study identifies obstacles and solutions to improve performance and adoption of irrigation decision support tools at the field scale.
“We wanted to offer our perspective on how to achieve field-scale precision irrigation with the most recent and advanced technologies on data collection, plant water stress, modeling, and decision-making,” says Jingwen Zhang, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) at Illinois and lead author on the article in Environmental Research Letters.
Read more at: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Science
Photo Credit: JCFUL via Pixabay
