Economic and social concerns are driving an increased focus on water use in irrigated dairying in south east Australia. Engineering improvements in irrigation supply infrastructure have substantially increased the ability of irrigators to control both the timing and amount of water delivered to crops, and industry water saving options are focused on improving the ability of farmers to match irrigation water use to plant water requirements.

This project combines recent and forecast weather data with satellite imagery to provide local, web based crop and location specific measures of reference evapotranspiration (ETref) and crop coefficient (Kc) for use in irrigation scheduling. The project uses the recently developed satellite/weather based irrigation information system (SBIIS) which can determine crop water requirement at paddock scale over large areas and successfully demonstrates its ability to provide reliable and affordable automated irrigation scheduling on dairy farms in Victoria.

Irrigators require simple and affective scheduling tools that allow them to capitalise on the farm and regional irrigation infrastructure investments enabling the minimisation of water use and attendant labour and energy costs. The project was designed to provide irrigation information that affordably matches on-farm irrigation supply with crop water demand over large production areas and negates the need for irrigators to independently acquire the technical skills needed for precision irrigation practices.

The objectives of this project have been:

1. To develop SBIIS irrigation performance pilots to be implemented on commercial dairy farms.

2. To implement and demonstrate to irrigators and irrigation service providers automation of irrigation events triggered by SBIIS.

3. To deliver SBIIS based web service that is available to irrigation industries.