Open AccessCell phone app to optimize irrigation cycles for US crops
Author(s) -
Simonet Daniel,
Alnaizy Raafat
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
meteorological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1469-8080
pISSN - 1350-4827
DOI - 10.1002/met.1890
Subject(s) - irrigation , computer science , agricultural engineering , phone , environmental science , water consumption , water resource management , agronomy , philosophy , linguistics , biology , engineering
Abstract Evaporation losses can be reduced by adapting a scheduled irrigation time and having a precise irrigation cycle, but owing to high costs, water optimization tools have thus far been available only to large firms. The study presents all the required steps to develop a smart phone app that can predict the optimal irrigation times for a future 15 days on a sample of 80 crops at any location in the United States. The app uses a soil water balance approach together with data provided by weather sites via application programming interfaces (API). This low‐cost, portable, water irrigation planner only requires the entry of both crop and sprinkler type in order to enhance greatly small farms' and private households' ability to lower their consumption of water and the associated costs.