Results of the irrigation scheduling

At the 2008 Nursery and Garden Industry National Conference in South Australia last month, David Hunt, Scientist for the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Queensland, presented the results of the NGIA research project Increasing Adoption of Innovative Irrigation and Water Recycling Technologies in Australian Nurseries, which looked into the improvements in plant production that are achieved by correct irrigation scheduling, and how plants respond to variable irrigation schedules.

Part one of David’s talk was about the sub-project Retrofit of Nurseries to Industry Standard – Water use efficiencies and economic assessment, which focused on retrofitting irrigation systems to improve water use efficiencies, and identifying the costs involved. Retrofitting a nursery’s irrigation system and conducting a cost/benefit analysis revealed a number of potential benefits to nurseries.

Part two was about the sub-project, Irrigation Scheduling, which aimed to identify whether soil moisture sensors are appropriate for use in a containerised production environment, and to evaluate the effectiveness of soil moisture sensors for irrigation scheduling within organic media.

Click here to view project findings and full speaker notes of David Hunt’s talk.

*Note: Rod Strahan, senior agricultural economist, DPI&F Toowoomba,also worked on conducting this research.