Helping Farmers Irrigate Efficiently

In Georgia, there are over 13,000 center pivot systems, watering about 1.5 million acres. However, recent drought periods and lawsuits between states have prompted a renewed interest in water conservation methods. The C.M. Stripling Irrigation Research Park (SIRP) is a state-of-the-art irrigation research and education center providing an easily accessible facility to assist farmers in managing irrigation and the general public in understanding the role of water in the economy of the region. Scientists, engineers, UGA Cooperative Extension specialists and staff collaborate to define crop water needs, improve food, feed and fiber production under irrigation, and find more efficient ways to apply irrigation water. SIRP hosted research projects from many different disciplines in 2009, including using remote sensing technologies to detect soil moisture stress in cotton, comparing new and established peanut cultivars under paired irrigated and dryland tests, evaluating irrigation scheduling methods for sweet corn production, evaluating corn and peanut irrigation schedules in a strip-till system, testing interaction of cotton plant growth regulators and irrigation, evaluation of subsurface drip irrigation in a corn-cotton-peanut rotation, low input peanut production systems in conventional vs. conservation tillage, irrigation scheduling effects on winter wheat yields, irrigation scheduling of watermelons and plastic mulch effects on thrip movement in drip irrigated tomatoes. SIRP's partnership with the Flint River Basin Program has assisted with the Program obtaining $10 million from the USDA-NRCS AWEP program for cost-sharing irrigation efficiency and conservation enhancements, including lower pressure drop nozzles, remote soil moisture monitoring, and variable-rate irrigation systems (VRI). The park and its scientists are working with the Flint River Basin Program to deploy Variable-Rate Irrigation systems by 2013. The effort will have installed 130 VRI systems for a total water savings of about 650 million gallons (or 2 acre-inches) per season.