A large portion of Washington's agricultural economy is derived from the irrigation of highvalue fruit and vegetable crops. Washington irrigators are recognizing that irrigation management makes a significant contribution to the yield and quality ofthese high-value crops. At the same time, salmon recovery efforts (water quantity) and high nitrates in groundwater (water quality) are threatening irrigators' access to their water supply. Scientific irrigation scheduling is a water management method that will help maintain in-stream flows, reduce leaching of agricultural chemicals, and insure crop quality and yield. The Washington Irrigation Scheduling Expert (WISE) Software is being developed to meet the needs of Washington irrigators. WISE is written in JAVA with NetBeans DeveloperX2 components to allow cross platform operation and easy access to reference evapotranspiration (ET) from Washington's 59 Public Agriculture Weather Stations (PAWS). The graphical user interface is intuitive and will help the user input their field-specific parameters such as crop type/timing, soil moisture and irrigation system specifications. WISE employs a short-term water balance that can be adjusted for soil-moisture conditions. WISE is not a black box calculationof when and how much to irrigate since important steps are displayed and made apparent to the user. This feature also makes WISE an educational tool that teaches the principles of irrigation scheduling.
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