Sustainability of irrigation practices is an important objective to be pursued in many countries, especially in regions where water scarcity causes strong conflicts among different water uses. The efficient use of irrigation water is a key factor in coping with the food demands of an increasing world population and with the negative effects of climate change on water resource availability in many areas. In this complex context, it is important that farmers can rely on instruments and practices that enable a better management of water at the field scale, whatever the irrigation method they adopt. In this paper, we present an open‐hardware device based on the Arduino technology that was developed to allow the continuous monitoring of soil water potential in the root zone for supporting irrigation scheduling at the field scale. The structure of the device is flexible and can be adapted to host different types of sensors. The results, obtained managing irrigation in a peach orchard, show that adoption of the device, together with a simple irrigation scheduling criterion, allowed a significant increase of water use efficiency without causing a reduction of the quantity and quality of crop production. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.