Precision irrigation scheduling using real-time sensors has the potential to boost water use efficiency while maximizing resource utilization. Traditional farming is adversely affected by improper resource management. To overcome a farmer's efforts, an IoT-based drip irrigation system was developed and tested for system performance. It was compared with an ETc-based drip irrigation system for brinjal crops grown in planter beds filled with vertisols. The developed system, consisting of sensors and microcontrollers, records the environmental parameters, namely, soil moisture content, soil temperature, and relative humidity and temperature. Irrigation scheduling was programmed using upper (field capacity) and lower thresholds (50% plant available water). Irrigation applications were triggered when the soil moisture value reached the lower threshold (33%) and ended after the field capacity was attained (46%). The information captured by the sensors is wirelessly uploaded to the cloud server using IoT technology, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. It was observed that the IoT-based drip irrigation testing plant grew 1.3 cm taller than the ETc-based drip irrigation testing plant. The length and width of brinjal plant leaves also increased more than the ETc-based drip irrigation treatments. The IoT-based drip irrigation treatments improved pump operating time, leaf length and width by 85 min, 4.4 cm and 3.1 cm, respectively, compared to 125 min, 3.7 cm and 2.4 cm for the ETc-based drip irrigation treatment. During a period of 31 days, water savings of 35% were observed compared to ETc-based drip irrigation. The developed system was rugged, and a water-resistant enclosure allowed its use in outdoor agriculture fields.

Climate change has led to increasing global air temperatures. In the field of crop cultivation, long-term high temperatures (heatwaves) during the rice-growing season might increase the risk of high-temperature damage to rice, which might result in reductions to the yield and quality of rice. In this study, a hybrid forecast model consisting of a combined paddy field heat balance model and a meteorological forecast model is proposed for predicting 1-day-ahead water temperatures as an alert system for high-temperature damage to paddy fields, with resolution in terms of hours. The results show close agreement between the measured and predicted water temperatures, and the high-temperature alert accuracy was 88.5%. Additionally, the climate resilience of paddy fields was investigated by using the rising annual temperatures due to climate change. The observations indicate that while paddy fields are sensitive to the climate, their climate resilience can be improved through artificial measures. Farmers and managers of paddy fields can thus be made aware of the water temperatures of the paddy fields in advance to enable reasonable management of water resources and avoid high-temperature damages caused by extreme weather conditions.

Reclaimed water (RW) applied in drip irrigation systems could be a solution to cope with the challenges of limited freshwater resources. Biofilm growth in irrigation systems is an unavoidable issue when using RW. To date, strong chemical bactericides mostly dominate the commercial market in controlling biofilms. However, recently scientists have been concerned about their real efficacy and environmental risks. This study assesses a low-concentration microbial antagonist (i.e., Bacillus amyloliquefaciens inoculums, BAI) intermittently injected into the systems to mitigate biofilm formation in three types of drip emitters using two kinds of treated RW. The results indicated that the application of BAI significantly (p < .05) mitigated the microbial biomass within biofilms when compared with the control groups (no-BAI). In addition, BAI reduced the contents of extracellular polysaccharides and proteins of biofilms, which decreased the total biomass in BAI treatments by 44.9%–73.8%. Consequently, BAI effectively improved the emitter performances and increased the discharge variation rate by 31.9%–44.3%. These findings might provide a new perspective to control biofouling when applying RW in irrigation systems, with potential implications for sustainable water management in agricultural production.

Presented at: 73rd IEC Meeting, Adelaide, Australia, 2022

Within the Chinese Loess Plateau, water resources are scarce, and irrigation ef?ciency is a challenging issue. Traditional surface drip irrigation (SDI) methods have failed to improve irrigation ef?ciency and reduce surface evaporation in the region. An easy-to-install and practicable root-zone injection irrigation (RII) method, with a low risk of emitter clogging and which uses subsurface in?ltration-promoting apparatuses (SIPA) to deliver water directly to the root zone, was designed and tested in an apple orchard over 3 years in northern Shaanxi, China. In the 0–0.6 m soil layer (where the apple roots are concentrated), the RII method produced consistently higher soil water content than the SDI method over all three growing seasons. The soil water content was consistently higher than 60% of ?eld capacity, thus meeting the water requirements of fruit-bearing apple trees. In addition, the RII method alleviated soil desiccation, signi?cantly increased apple yields and improved fruit quality compared with the SDI method using the same volume of irrigation water. Both irrigation ef?ciency and water-use ef?ciency were improved with the RII method. These results provide a theoretical basis for the utilisation of the RII irrigation method in apple orchards in semi-arid regions, which may improve water conservation and the sustainability of apple production.

Keywords: Root-zone injection irrigation, subsurface, emitter clogging, surface drip irrigation

Presented at: 72nd IEC Meeting 2021, Marrakesh, Morocco

Keywords: Climate, agriculture, river

Presented at: 71st IEC Meeting 2020, New Delhi, India

Keywords: Inter-basin; multi-reservoir operation; early risk warning system; mixed Copula function; early warning signals; uncertain factor; emergency water shortage measures

Presented at: 70th IEC Meeting 2019, Bali, Indonesia

Keywords: ANFIS; groundwater level; salinity; SVM; waterlogging

Presented at: 69th IEC Meeting 2018, Saskatoon, Canada

Keywords: Fertigation; drainage water of fish farms; yield production; SALTMED

Presented at: 69th IEC Meeting 2018, Saskatoon, Canada

Keywords: Irrigation scheduling; soil water tension-based irrigation; crop coefcient; crop growth modelling; multi-objective optimization; white cabbage

Presented at: 68th IEC Meeting 2017, Mexico City, Mexico,

Keywords: Groundwater irrigation; energy; greenhouse gas emissions; water depletion

Presented at: 67th IEC Meeting 2016, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Keywords: Water–food–energy nexus; green economy; water efficiency; energy efficiency; food waste; virtual water; water footprint; integrated water resource management; supply chain; environment; ecology

Presented at: 66th IEC Meeting 2015, Montpellier, France

Keywords: Multi-sector water sharing; stakeholder collaboration; social and economic factors in water management

Presented at: 65th IEC Meeting 2014, Gwangju, Rep. of Korea

Keywords: Land use planning; water productivity; remote sensing; economic analysis; water indicators

Presented at: 64th IEC Meeting 2013, Mardin, Turkey

Keywords: Irrigation mosaics; mosaics; irrigation impact; irrigation patches

Presented at: 63rd IEC Meeting 2012, Adelaide, Australia

Keywords: water leak detection; airborne remote sensing; multispectral imaging; irrigation distribution network; canal leakage; field reconnaissance; thermal imagery; normalized difference vegetation index

Presented at: 62nd IEC Meeting 2011, Tehran, Iran

Keywords: Drainage; irrigation; salinity; perception; problem tree; oasis; Tunisia

Presented at: 61st IEC Meeting 2010, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: BHIWA model; water budgets; scenarios development; water situation indicators

Presented at: 60th IEC Meeting 2009, New Delhi, India

Keywords: Drainage; drain depth; waterlogging; salinity

Presented at: 59th IEC Meeting 2008, Lahore, Pakistan

Keywords: systemlevel water saving; system dynamic model; production and profit functions; China

Presented at: 59th IEC Meeting 2008, Lahore, Pakistan

Keywords: irrigated agriculture; user charges; market trades; water user associations; socioeconomic transformation; South Africa

Presented at: 58th IEC Meeting 2007, Sacramento, USA

Keywords: Farmers' participation; land leveling; crop irrigation scheduling; water saving; wheat yield

Presented at: 57th IE Meeting 2006, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia