Towards evaluation of adaptive control systems for improved site-specific irrigation of cotton

Abstract

[Abstract]: Irrigation application in cotton crops is traditionally discharged at a constant rate for an entire field. However, not all plants in a crop may require the same amount of water due to the stochastic nature of the crop response and the spatial variability of environmental factors within the field. Control strategies are required to effectively manage spatially and temporally varied irrigation applications under large mobile irrigation machines (LMIMs, e.g. centre pivots and lateral moves) in real-time. We demonstrate that a decision-making framework for the site-specific irrigation of cotton should consist of a generic control scheme that integrates multi-dimensional irrigation scheduling strategies and is robust with respect to data gaps and deficiencies. These strategies may be based on historical (mapped) soil and application data, current and recent environmental (e.g. meteorological) data and measured plant-response data. A review of potential control strategies has been conducted and the development of a framework to evaluate these strategies is reported.