A decision support tool for irrigation management of your orchards trees.
Description
Optimal irrigation of fruit and nut trees is essential to maximize yield and optimize fruit quality. To apply the optimal irrigation, growers must consider multiple factors related to the crop, soil, irrigation system, production objective, and weather forecasts. Growers need to make decisions every week for multiple fields with different characteristics, which makes irrigation management is extremely complex and time-consuming. The decision-making process can be facilitated by using the Vintel Orchards® mobile application developed by itk. Vintel Orchards® is an application enabling growers to easily enter their field characteristics, compare their irrigation practices to optimal irrigation and receive alerts when the fields are not optimally irrigated.
Progress
80
Testing phase by growers underway
Objectives
The main objectives of this project are to develop user-friendly mobile applications for scheduling irrigation for multiple crops based on water demand and weather forecasts, to facilitate deficit irrigation practices in orchards, and provide recommendations for optimal irrigation
Development of a DST for growers
to facilitate irrigation scheduling across multiple fields
Accurate calculation of irrigation requirements
to maximize crop yield without wasting water
Use deficit irrigation practices
to save water and money
Verify your decisions
by comparing your irrigation practices with optimal irrigation and receive alerts when a field has not received optimal irrigation
7-day Irrigation forecast
Water status management according to your production objective
ETc and Rain forecast
Future improvements
The application will be improved based on grower’s requirements that could be:
Improve irrigation management
by taking into account canopy variability in the orchard using satellite images
Implement field information
from flow meters: soil moisture sensors and pressure chamber
Manage the irrigation of other crops
Nitrogen Management
Partners
The application was developed by itk in collaboration with irrigation experts from UC Davis in California. The project was partially funded by the BPI project.
