Advanced Irrigation Scheduling Improves Water Timing And Yields

By: John Hart

Very few Georgia farmers use advanced irrigation scheduling techniques to manage irrigation on their farms because they often find it overwhelming or too costly to implement.

“The people that use advanced irrigation techniques are usually consultants in Georgia. There is a lot of data and you have to interpret that data and make decisions from that data. Sometimes producers find it is a little overwhelming and easier to pay somebody else to work with it,” says Wesley Porter, Extension precision agriculture and irrigation specialist with the University of Georgia in Tifton.

Most farmers still use visible stress to plants to determine their irrigation schedule, Porter said. But in a paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Peanut Research and Education Society in Clearwater, Fla., Porter emphasized that irrigation scheduling treatments are a good way to manage irrigation on the farm.