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6.7: Summary

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    Irrigation scheduling refers to the timing and amount of irrigation water applications. By accounting for or measuring soil water and by knowing plant water needs, the goals of good irrigation scheduling can be accomplished; production goals can be met with minimum water. By minimizing water applications, deep percolation of water and chemicals is minimized and energy is saved.

    Two important concepts in scheduling are: the latest date (LD) and the earliest date (ED). By irrigating on or before the LD, plant water stress is avoided. By waiting, at least until the ED, deep percolation losses are avoided or minimized. Built into the ED is an allowance for storing rainfall in the soil, an important consideration in semiarid and subhumid regions.

    Scheduling according to soil water content can be achieved using checkbook accounting, which considers the deposits to the soil water reservoir (rainfall and irrigation) and also considers withdrawals from the soil water reservoir (ET and drainage). An alternative to checkbook accounting is to directly measure soil water content.

    Another scheduling option is to irrigate in response to plant water status. Plant water status is an integrator of soil water, plant characteristics, and weather conditions. Several plant water status methods are available including measuring leaf water potential and measuring the canopy temperature. Canopy temperature can be used in the crop water stress index method or the threshold-time-temperature method to schedule irrigations.

    Variable rate irrigation (VRI) allows for spatial management of soil water by accounting for variability in soils within a field. Besides being able to irrigate according to the spatial distribution of soils, an additional advantage of VRI is the opportunity to create “avoidance zones” in a field where water or chemigation applications are not desirable.


    6.7: Summary is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.