アグロテクノロジー

概要

An Irrigation Scheduling App Based on Evapotranspiration and Effective Rainfall for Bangladeshi Crops

Daniel Simonet*

Irrigation management is about determining when and how much water to apply for irrigation. Deciding when to apply irrigation depends on the amount of water the crop uses and the total moisture held in the soil. With rising competition for water and the rational use of natural resources being indispensable, irrigation water management activities must be efficient and accessible to all, not just large-scale farms. We use the Water Balance Approach to compute the optimal irrigation cycle in a smart phone app. Precision irrigation optimizes irrigation and minimizes water use while maximizing crop yields, thereby increasing water resources’ effective management. This paper presents a new smartphone app that uses meteorological and soil data to measure water usage to compute a monthly irrigation program for selected crops in Bangladesh. The app calculates the optimal irrigation cycle: the average daily amount of irrigation water in the current month required to maximize crop productivity.