Knowing Your Corn’s Needs Better: Optimize Irrigation With a New App

By Brad Buck

University of Florida researchers have developed an app that will help farmers reduce the risk of over- or under-watering their crops.

Scientists from UF/IFAS, Auburn and the University of Georgia designed and are refining the app, courtesy of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Conservation Innovation program.

“The critical part of this app is that farmers can avoid risks or mistakes,” said Ziwen Yu, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering and principal investigator for the project. “A lot of producers overirrigate their farms. With the app, farmers will know better how much water crops will need.”

The key to this app is that it gets information from soil moisture sensors that go to various depths beneath the ground: 2 inches, 6 inches and 10 inches, which is the average root depth of Florida’s sweet corn.

“Most tools — such as smart apps or software — treat the root zone as one uniform layer, but ours recognizes that moisture varies at different depths,” Yu said.

Researchers are still collecting data for the study, so they’re not yet predicting how much water their technology can save. But on average, sweet corn needs about 1 inch of water per week, or about 27,000 gallons per acre.

The app, which researchers hope to make available to farmers before the end of this year, predicts soil moisture five to seven days in advance, giving growers a heads-up on when to water their crops. Click on the Smart Irrigation website to find out when, where and how to get the corn app.

Users simply input current or recent soil moisture readings, and the app adjusts its predictions to match a specific field’s conditions.

Now that Yu, his UF/IFAS colleagues and those at Auburn and UGA have shown the app works on sweet corn, they’re eager to try it on other types of crops.

“Farmers will even be able to schedule future irrigation events, and the app will factor in both weather patterns and your planned watering to give precise estimation of root-zone moisture on a farm,” he said. “This means less guesswork, more efficient water use and healthier crops. Knowing the forecast of root zone soil moisture (water available to pants) will help vegetable farmers better manage the crop and improve the efficiency of both irrigation and fertilization, saving operation cost.”