Award winner profile
Contributors to the USDA-NIFA Multistate Project W-3128 recently honored with the IA’s National Water and Energy Conservation Award have provided the following information about the work conducted in this project, as well as its successes.
Providing growers practical applications
for microirrigation technologies By Steven J. Loring, PhD; Freddie Lamm, PhD; and Claude J. Phene, PhD
Microirrigation is a highly efficient irrigation method and allows a level of precision management not possible with other methods. This allows management methods to more fully use the highly specific data provided by remote sensing or direct sensor arrays. The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture W3128 Multistate Research Project: “Scaling Microirrigation Technologies to Address the Global Water Challenge” has a long record of accomplishments in providing critical, science-based, practical methods to help address global water challenges.
The microirrigation project was self-organized in 1972 under the USDA multistate project umbrella to share the science that advances the development, use and practical application of microirrigation in agriculture. Originally formed as a Western U.S. regional project concerning drip and trickle irrigation, over the years the group has expand- ed to include several disciplines represented by agricultural engineers, plant and soil scientists, and agricultural economists across the nation.
microirrigation
The W3128 project currently has 43 participants from 22 different universities, two USDA Agricultural Research laboratories, one U.S. Geological Survey center, and one national USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service center. Geographically, project participation has ranged from Hawaii to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and from New York to Washington.
W3128 participants have sought two overarching outcomes: 1) dissemination of microirrigation technologies and management recommendations, and 2) creating meaningful interaction with growers to learn their microirrigation successes and challenges.
As a result of the group’s commitment, research findings have been disseminated via presentations, conference papers, workshops and field days. More importantly, all of this effort and technology transfer has closed the loop on the group’s entire purpose, which is to make a difference. The difference this group has made is real-world adoption of science-based microirrigation technology and enhanced use of irrigation scheduling techniques of the technology that has saved countless gallons of water and associated energy costs.
Dual system of drip tape and microsprinkler
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Irrigation TODAY | January 2018
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