Best Practise in Water Management and Irrigation

The course will be tailored to the individuals who attend but initially aimed at individuals who wish to understand how best to manage irrigation of potato, field vegetables and salad crop yields and quality. The principles of irrigation management: • yield and quality benefits of irrigation for different crop species; • assessing the site and field condition to inform irrigation management decisions; • understanding field capacity, crop available water supply; infiltration rates for different soil types; • estimating soil moisture using soil moisture sensors or modelling techniques; • developing crop irrigation schedules for a range of crop species. Optimising irrigation in practice: • examples of commonly used soil moisture sensors – their benefits and limitations; • irrigation application equipment – review of the types of equipment available, including rain guns, booms, linear irrigators and drip systems; • key actions to optimise performance of equipment including operating pressures and droplet size; • recording water use and application uniformity; • compliance with relevant environmental legislation; • applying irrigation effectively and efficiently during a cropping season, with worked example.

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