Wang, E., Attard, S., McGlinchey, M., Xiang, W., Philippa, B., Linton, A.L., and Everingham, Y. (2019) Smarter irrigation scheduling in the sugarcane farming system using the Internet of Things. In: Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (41) pp. 164-170. From: ASSCT 2019: 41st Annual Conference of the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, 30 April - 3 May 2019, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

Better irrigation practices can lead to improved yields through less water stress and reduced water usage to deliver economic benefits for farmers. More and more sugarcane growers are transitioning to automated irrigation in the Burdekin and other regions. Automated irrigation systems can save farmers a significant amount of time by remotely turning on and off pumps and valves. However, the system could be improved if it could be integrated with tools that factor in the weather, crop growing conditions, water deficit, and crop stress, to improve irrigation use efficiency. IrrigWeb is a decision-support tool that is turned to as a solution to this problem. IrrigWeb uses CANEGRO to help farmers decide when to irrigate and how much to apply. Farmers can then use this information to plan their irrigation management. However, managing irrigation is a considerable time investment for Burdekin farmers. A tool is needed to integrate the auto-irrigation system (e.g., WiSA) and IrrigWeb to provide a smarter irrigation solution. An uplink program (WiSA to IrrigWeb) has been successfully developed and implemented as part of a pilot study. It saves farmers a significant amount of time by uploading irrigation and rainfall data automatically instead of the farmer having to input them manually. This paper focuses on developing a smarter irrigation-scheduling tool that connects IrrigWeb to WiSA. A downlink program was developed to download, calculate and apply irrigation schedules automatically. In this process, sugarcane irrigators will spend less time manually setting up irrigation schedules as it will happen automatically. The simulation results demonstrated that the downlink program could improve the scheduling by incorporating practical limitations, such as pumping capacity or pumping time constraints, that are found on the farm.

Item ID:	58478
Item Type:	Conference Item (Research - E1)
ISSN:	0726-0822
Related URLs:	https://www.assct.com.au/
Copyright Information:	© 2019 Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists. All rights reserved.
Funders:	National Environmental Research Program (NERP)
Projects and Grants:	NERP 3.1.2
Date Deposited:	10 Sep 2019 00:54
FoR Codes:	30 AGRICULTURAL, VETERINARY AND FOOD SCIENCES > 3002 Agriculture, land and farm management > 300201 Agricultural hydrology @ 50% 40 ENGINEERING > 4009 Electronics, sensors and digital hardware > 400908 Microelectronics @ 50%
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