Center pivot-mounted sensors support reduced irrigation while maintaining crop yields

An Irrigation Innovation Consortium supported project team based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently published an article, “Toward automated irrigated management with integrated crop water stress index and spatial water balance” in the journal Precision Agriculture based on their work.

Their experiment tested the use of two decision support systems in managing corn and soybean irrigation during the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons, which were dry and wet years, respectively. These systems— the Irrigation Scheduling Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (ISSCADA) and Spatial EvapoTranspiration Modeling Interface (SETMI)— demonstrated their potential and efficacy in supporting reduced irrigation applications while maintaining crop yields.

The study demonstrated that mounting infrared thermometers on a pivot is a successful method for accurately determining crop spatial canopy temperature and crop water stress, along with using pivots as moving platforms for collecting data using multispectral sensors and cameras (RGB and thermal). This method of collecting data works under in windy conditions and should be less costly and labor intensive compared to using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

The different irrigation refill levels used in this experiment included rainfed, deficit, full, and over-applied irrigation at 0, 50, 100, and 150%, respectively of the amounts determined by each irrigation scheduling method for the full level. The irrigation depths prescribed in an irrigation event ranged between 5 and 25 mm. No significant differences were observed in crop yield among the different irrigation methods for both years. ISSCADA plant feedback prescribed the least irrigation among the methods for the majority of the cases.

For complete information on methods, results and conclusions, click the link below to access this open access article.