FieldNET Advisor, an advanced irrigation management solution, will be available for use on potatoes and other crops for the 2018 growing season. The latest addition to the FieldNET by Lindsay line of products, the tool uses patented technology to deliver the information growers need to make faster, better-informed decisions about when, where and how much to irrigate—improving yields while reducing water usage and other input costs.
“When we launched FieldNET Advisor earlier this year, it was for use on corn and soybeans. We’re very excited that we now can offer the smartest solution in irrigation to potato growers, too,” says Brian Magnusson, vice president of irrigation technology at Lindsay Corporation. “It combines more than 40 years of crop and irrigation science with FieldNET’s cloud computing capabilities, remote sensing functionality and machine learning to provide growers with field- and crop-specific irrigation recommendations.”
After entering the field’s crop type, hybrids and planting dates, the simple, easy-to-use tool will:
- Track the available soil water throughout the field by combining a soil map of the field, proprietary and dynamic crop canopy and root growth models, hyper-local weather data and the as-applied irrigation history;
- Create a high-resolution map showing the soil water depletion levels across the entire field;
- Forecast the crop’s future water needs and predict when and where, without additional irrigation, yield reduction due to water stress will occur—taking into account the severity of the stress and the crop’s yield sensitivity to water at different growth stages;
- Automatically generate variable rate irrigation (VRI) prescriptions, which are continuously updated to account for actual and forecasted weather, changing crop water requirements, and as-applied irrigation; and
- Integrate into FieldNET’s powerful remote monitoring and control platform, giving growers the ability to immediately put their irrigation decisions into action and monitor their progress.
“FieldNET Advisor is the first fully closed-loop precision irrigation system,” says Magnusson. “It gathers field information, automatically combines it with massive amounts of third-party data and then processes everything into simple, easy-to-understand irrigation and variable rate irrigation plans. The grower can then immediately put those plans into action with the simple touch of a button on a smartphone, tablet or laptop.”
For growers who already have FieldNET remote monitoring and control equipment installed on their pivots, FieldNET Advisor requires no additional hardware, sensors or probes.
FieldNET Advisor recently was named a 2018 AE50 Award winner. Presented by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, the award recognizes the year’s most innovative designs in engineering products or systems for the food and agriculture industries.
For more information about FieldNET Advisor, talk to your local Zimmatic dealer or visit www.fieldnetadvisor.com.