Benefits of using variable rate application recommendations
or precision VRI solution. Only a complete system has the power to do all the heavy lifting for the grower and manage the volume and complexity of data inputs. The right system can provide seamless and accurate irrigation recommendations that give growers confidence.
Numerous inputs go into determining the best time to irrigate a certain crop. How much water is needed? Where should VRI changes occur throughout the field? Connecting irrigation controllers with a cloud-based irrigation scheduling solution unlocks features for each unique field including
• historical and up-to-the-minute hyperlocal and hyperaccurate weather data at the field level.
• soil maps of the field that become individual management zones.
• decades of proven crop science and irrigation research. Growers simply select their crop type, hybrid and planting dates and watch the system automatically track crop development stages, root depths and actual water use.
• soil water depletion tracking throughout the entire field. • actual as-applied irrigation history across the entire field.
All these resulting inputs provide the foundation for automatic tracking of millions of data points per field to accurately and easily determine the crop water balance throughout the field. The built-in irrigation schedule tool processes all this data and automatically creates a variable rate application recommendation tailored for each field’s unique needs.
Using proven cloud-based technologies simplifies irrigation science.
Today’s ag controllers with VRI features have made great strides toward improving irrigation efficiency. However, the next leap to enhance the way growers apply water to their crops is easy and affordable. Growers can fully optimize their pivot or lateral irrigation systems and make the control panels smarter by connecting them to a seamless irrigation scheduling tool. Getting more value from our water requires a constant daily to hourly feedback loop that analyzes inputs, uses proven science and irrigation methods to create recommendations, and reliably and automatically generates irrigation programs that growers can easily and quickly execute.
Reece Andrews is the director of FieldNET and Zimmatic Controls at Lindsay Corporation. Andrews has been with Lindsay Corporation for 31 years with a focus on product management for the past 20 years.
18 Irrigation TODAY | July 2018 Ag controller with VRI features Photo credit: Lindsay Corporation
ease of use – The irrigation schedule tool does all the heavy lifting and creates intuitive VRI recommendations that optimize water across the field.
time saved – With faster, better- informed irrgiation decisions, recommendations can be immediately put into action without the need to create complex irrigation programs from scratch.
increased yields – Avoid crop stress from too much (or too little) water.
reduced input costs – Energy and fertilizer costs are reduced.
virtual 24/7 professional irrigation monitoring – The system dynamically updates VRI programs based on the weather, crop stages and historical as- applied irrigation.
alerts – Get notified when it’s time to irrigate next.
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