New “Focus on Cotton” Webcast
UGA’s Wesley M. Porter, Ph.D.
By Clint Thompson
Date: November 2, 2016
Approximately 90% of growers in the southeastern United States irrigate crops when they observe visible stress, but by this point, the crops have already lost yield. Yield and quality can be maintained and sometimes increased with irrigation scheduling.
Wesley M. Porter, assistant professor and extension precision ag and irrigation specialist in the Crop and Soil Sciences Department, University of Georgia, Tifton, has recorded a new “Focus on Cotton” webcast, “On Farm Irrigation Scheduling in Georgia: AgWET (Water Efficiency Team).” Porter describes how a large-scale irrigation scheduling project has been implemented in Georgia; he also offers responses to the project and suggests improvements that can be made.
Porter covers these main topics in the webcast:
- How to select a sensor type
- How to select where to place sensors within the field
- How to look at the data from sensors
- What to consider when adopting a soil moisture sensor system
Although this presentation focuses on Georgia, the information it presents applies to growers across most of the United States. Irrigation scheduling is a critical tool for successfully managing irrigation on crops while maximizing irrigation water use efficiency and in some cases increasing quality and yield.
This 24-minute presentation is available through the “Focus on Cotton” resource on the Plant Management Network. This resource contains more than 75 webcasts, along with presentations from five conferences, on a broad range of aspects of cotton crop management: agronomic practices, diseases, harvest and ginning, insects, irrigation, nematodes, precision agriculture, soil health and crop fertility, and weeds. These webcasts are available to readers open access (without a subscription).
The “Focus on Cotton” homepage also provides access to “Cotton Cultivated,” a new resource from Cotton Incorporated that helps users quickly find the most current cotton production information available. These and other resources are freely available courtesy of Cotton Incorporated at www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/foco.
Source: The Cotton Board