A Smartphone Application for Scheduling Irrigation in Cotton

摘要

The goal of this work was to develop an easy-to-use and engaging irrigation scheduling tool for cotton which operates on a smartphone platform. The Cotton Smartlrrigation App (Cotton App) uses an interactive ET-based soil water balance model. The Cotton App uses meteorological data from weather station networks, soil parameters, crop phenology, crop coefficients, and irrigation applications to estimate root zone soil water deficits (RZSWD) in terms ofpercent as well as of inches of water. The CottonApp sends notifications to the user when the RZSWD exceeds 40%, when phenological changes occur, and when rain is recorded at the nearest weather station. It operates on both iOS and Android operating systems and was released during March 2014. The Cotton App was evaluated in field trials for three years and performed well when compared to other irrigation scheduling tools. Its geographical footprint is currently limited to the states of Georgia and Florida, United States, because it uses meteorologicaldata only from weather station networks in these states. A new version which will be released in 2017 uses national gridded meteorological data sets and will allow the Cotton App to be used in most cotton growing areas of the United States.