Funding boost for Queensland irrigation research

The National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA), based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), has received a funding boost of $89,190 from the Queensland Department of Natural Resources & Mines.

The funds will be used to develop and promote technologies which will assist irrigators with scheduling and water management. According to NCEA Deputy Director Erik Schmidt, the work will be conducted as part of an ongoing research program looking at rural water use efficiency.

“The next step is to develop calculation tools, accessible on smartphones and other mobile devices, that allow irrigation farmers to maximise their productivity and manage their water resources,” Schmidt said.

“We’re going to be working with these farmers and their industry advisors to help them better understand their systems for better crop production and water management.”

Schmidt said the research will provide significant benefits to producers, as “scheduling irrigations to match volume of water applied with the crop water requirement has been identified as a very simple method for reducing water loss through over-irrigation and for reducing energy wasted in pumping more water than necessary”.

He said the centre plans to profile at least 30 irrigation farms to assess their system capacity and managed system capacity. “This will give us a better understanding of how widespread the issues of undersized or undermanaged irrigation systems are,” he explained.

He added that the NCEA’s Scheduling Irrigation Diary tool will soon be receiving augmented reality features to enhance the user interface.