Award details

Farm Level Optimal Water Management: Assistant for Irrigation under Deficit - FLOWAID

Reference	BBS/E/C/00004861
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr W Whalley
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	61,566
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/10/2006
End date	30/09/2009
Duration	36 months

Abstract

The objective of FLOW-AID is to contribute to sustainability of irrigated agriculture by developing, testing in relevant conditions, and fine-tuning through feed-back, an irrigation management system that can be used at farm level in situations where there is a limited water supply and water quality. The project integrates innovative sensor technologies into a decision support system for irrigation management, taking into consideration relevant factors in a number of third country partners. The specific objectives are to develop and test new and innovative, but simple and affordable, technical concepts (hardware and software) for irrigation under deficit, at farms in a large variety of set-ups and constraints, particularly: a maintenance free tensiometer; wireless, low-power data networks; an expert system to assist farm zoning and crop planning, in view of expected water availability (amount and quality); a short-term irrigation scheduling module that allocates available water among several plots and schedules irrigation for each one. The scientific results from the research will be evaluated in four test-sites, three of them located in Mediterranean Party Countries (Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan), where the large future market for deficit irrigation systems will be. The test-sites are chosen in such a way that they differ in the type of constraints, irrigation structures, crop types, local water supplies, availability of water and water sources in amount and quality, the local goals, and their complexity. SME partners will take up research results and build prototypes, which will be installed at the test-sites. In close co-operation all partners will adapt the general concepts of water management to the local situation, by using appropriate parts of it, based upon the test-results. The SME involvement will ensure that the results will be implemented in a short time into adequate and appropriate products for the end-user irrigation market.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Agri-food (AF)
Research Topics	Technology and Methods Development
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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