Irrigation Decision Making Insight

Feedback from the 2000 release of Irrigation Insights 1 : Soil Water Monitoring identified the following gap – “now that we have the data, how do we use it to improve our irrigation decision ?” Further to this, it has been recognised that the modern farming system relies on an ever increasing number of different data streams.

These data are used to plan (eg farm gross water budget), optimise production quantity/ quality and input use, and reduce offsite impacts. However, few resources are available that explain how much data to collect, how to interpret the information or how to integrate the different data streams to adequately inform the irrigation decision.

Hence, an immense knowledge base is being developed by equipment developers, consultants, and farmers, but probably less than fully/effectively utilised. This project will distil this knowledge bank into a guide to inform the whole industry.

Aims

Better informed irrigation decisions through publication that :

• Identify different data streams involved in the irrigation farmers decision
• For each stream denote the minimum and optimum data collection requirements and interpretation guide for those streams for which limited current resources exist eg. soil moisture monitoring
• Demonstrate how different information can be integrated to better inform the irrigation decision within whole farm decision making

Outcomes

Better informed irrigation decisions through better informed researchers, extension staff, consultants and farmers.

The project will effectively remove a barrier in understanding how the data collected on-farm can be made to improve the irrigation decision and providing explanation of this to farmers/extension personnel and consultants.

Background

Primary producers must maintain income in an era of increasing pressure from product quality, water reform and environmental sustainability areas. Collecting more information about their systems and using it better has been one of the major recommendations for facing these stresses. However, no guide to help with this exists.

Publications and Resources