New software is avialable to assist Minnesota farmers and crop advisors with irrigation scheduling and with recording in-field soil water status and precipitation amounts. Irrigation engineers Tom Scherer and Dean Steele from North Dakota State University and Jerry Wright from the University of Minnesota developed a spreadsheet software program that estimates daily soil water status for individual irrigated fields for several conventional crops. The software was field tested with about a dozen farmers and crop consultants in Minnesota during the summer of 1999. Users were surveyed at the end of the year and their suggestions for improvements were incorporated into the current version of the software.
The software creates a spreadsheet-like work document for each irrigated field that reflects soil types, available water holding capacity, crop-type, and emergence date. The user is required to input the maximum daily air temperature for each day after emergence, daily rainfall amounts, and irrigation depths for each irrigation. If the daily air temperature is not entered, a historical average maximum temperature is assigned based on the nearest historical weather site that is incorporated into the software. The software lists several regional weather stations from around Minnesota and North Dakota.
From these daily inputs, a field’s soil-water depletion status (expressed in inches of water depleted and also percent deficit) is estimated for each day. This estimate should be cross-checked every five to ten days with an in-field soil water assessment by the operator, and if differences are found, a correction can be made to the spreadsheet estimate.
The software generates soil-water depletion maps (example below) that are printable for taking to the field or for filing with other information on the specific field’s performance and inputs.
The software includes daily crop water use evapo-transpiration (ET) estimates for alfalfa, corn, soybeans, potatoes, dry beans, wheat, and sugar beets.
The program is designed to run on IBM-compatible computers with Windows 3.1 or higher operating systems. The software requires 5 MB of memory and 5 MB of free hard drive space. The program works better on faster processors and operating systems.
A copy of the software and operating manual can be obtained by sending a $30 check made payable to University of Minnesota to:
West Central Research and Outreach Center
University of Minnesota
Attn: Jerry Wright, Extension Engineer
PO Box 471
Morris, Minnesota 56267
For more information, contact Jerry Wright, Extension Engineer at the West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris, Minnesota at (320) 589-1711 or jwright@tc.umn.edu.
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This page is part of the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department web at http://www.bae.umn.edu/