Status: Completed
Funding Status: Funded
Dates: 03/17/2017 - 03/17/2017

The purpose of irrigation and nutrient management (INM) Assessments is to help growers effectively manage their irrigation water and nutrient additions to meet crop needs so that nutrient loads to ground water and surface water are reduced. Effective INM helps the region make progress toward several environmental objectives including reduced groundwater and surface water contamination, reduced groundwater use, agricultural sustainability, and healthier stream and ocean habitats. INM can benefit the grower through reducing the cost of over fertilizing, reducing water and pumping costs and achieving regulatory compliance. Each grower faces a different set of circumstances that play a role in their choice of management practices that will work best for their organization, current irrigation system, crop type and geo-physical setting. For this reason, on-farm assessments are the most effective way to help growers accomplish INM goal. By involving growers, farm managers and irrigators in the evaluation & assessment, knowledge and skills are transferred. Although the assessment is applied to a single block, the learnings are commonly transferred across the entire grower operation.

Goals

1) Improve irrigation efficiency through increasing distribution uniformity and scheduling application to meet plant water need, 2) Improve nutrient management to match the timing and amount of fertilizer application to meet plant needs

Programs

• Agriculture
• Irrigation Nutrient Management

Contact

Michael Cahn
831-759-7377
mdcahn@ucanr.edu

Photos & Images