TIA Irrigation Newsletter | December 2017
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In this newsletter
- Improving water use efficiency
- Understand and manage your soils under irrigation
- Take home messages from masterclass on farm drainage planning
- Farmer testimonial: David Whishaw
- Working smarter not harder
- Making sense of soils to increase productivity
- Irrigation pumps two day workshop
Improving water use efficiency
Water use efficiency helps us understand the performance of many aspects of irrigated agricultural production systems. Improving water use efficiency requires an understanding of the whole system, not just the application of water.
TIA Irrigation Program Leader, Sue Hinton (pictured above) outlines some of the key ways to improve efficiency and prevent water loss on your property.
Understand and manage your soils under irrigation
Having an understanding of the water holding capacity of your soil can be helpful for irrigation planning and may help to improve efficiency, regardless of the type of irrigation equipment being used to deliver the water.
It is useful to know how much water can be held by the different soil types in paddocks.
Take home messages from masterclass on farm drainage planning
As part of the Water for Profit program, TIA’s Dr Bill Cotching recently ran a two day masterclass on farm drainage planning.
The session was specifically designed for consultants who deliver drainage plans to farmers.
Farmer testimonial: David Whishaw
David Whishaw from Carrick (pictured) is participating in our Water for Profit program.
“It's always good working with a progressive group of farmers – you always learn something from one another. Hopefully as a group we can do something that is positive for the whole of the Tasmanian irrigation industry.”
Working smarter not harder
Researchers at TIA are trialling autonomous technology to develop a system that not only tells you when to irrigate your pasture, but then goes ahead and does it for you.
To do this, the team is working with the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture at the University of Southern Queensland, where a control platform called VARIwise has been developed.
Pictured: TIA's Dr James Hills and Mr David McLaren
Making sense of soils to increase productivity
Researchers at TIA are getting their hands dirty and taking a closer look at soil to help Tasmanian farmers increase their productivity and sustainability practices.
As part of the Water for Profit program, TIA has established a soil physics laboratory in Hobart that is using state of the art technology to characterise soils from demonstration sites across the state.
Pictured: Dr Marcus Hardie, Mr Garth Oliver and Associate Professor Caroline Mohammed
Irrigation pumps
two day workshop
In 2018, Irrigation Australia is running a two day workshop on irrigation pumps.
WHEN: Tue 20th & Wed 21st Mar 2018
WHERE: Department of Primary Industries, 171 Westbury Road, Prospect TAS, Conference Room 3
COST: $820 IAL MEMBER
$1,210 NON IAL MEMBER
