Four irrigation scheduling methods are compared over a three year period on the Safford Agricultural Center. A computerized checkbook method based on the consumptive water use curves of Erie, et al, updated with near real time evapotranspiration data from the AZMET system and utilizing empirical crop coefficients, produced the highest yields and with the highest water use efficiency. Scheduling irrigations with the IR thermometer produced yields higher than the Check when a Stress Index threshold of 2 (similar to a CWSI of 0.2) was used, but not with a threshold value of 3 nor 4. A method of irrigation scheduling using Erie's curves, but not updated for current weather values, yielded less than the check in all years of the study, and was not considered an acceptable method Irrigation inputs from the 1990 season were plugged into new near real time irrigation scheduling software which utilizes AZMET data to determine both evapotranspiration and crop coefficients. This method was found to track the field data quite well and will be utilized in future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/201348 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Clark, Lee J., Carpenter, Eddie W. |
| Contributors | Ottman, Michael, Bantlin, Marguerite |
| Publisher | College of Agriculture, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Article |
| Relation | 370084, Series P-84 |
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