Nov 30, 2017Lindsay launches new irrigation manager for use on potato crops
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 line of products by Lindsay is designed to help growers make faster, better-informed decisions about when, where and how much to irrigate.
“When we launched FieldNET Advisor earlier this year, it was for use on corn and soybeans,” said Brian Magnusson, vice president of irrigation technology at Lindsay. “We’re very excited that we now can offer the smartest solution in irrigation to potato growers, too,”
After entering the field’s crop type, hybrids and planting dates, the manger 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.
- Integrate into FieldNET’s remote monitoring and control platform, giving growers the ability to immediately put their irrigation decisions into action and monitor their progress.
“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,” Magnusson said. He added that for growers who already have FieldNET remote monitoring and control equipment installed on their pivots, the new manager requires no additional hardware, sensors or probes.
