Irrigator Pro is a public domain irrigation scheduling model developed by the USDA-ARS National Peanut Research Laboratory. The latest version of the model uses either matric potential sensors to estimate the plant’s available soil water or manual data input. In this project, a new algorithm is developed, which will provide growers and consultants with much more flexibility in how they can feed data to the model. The new version will also run with Volumetric Water Content sensors, giving the opportunity to the grower to see the Available Water Content in real-time. The model will run as an irrigation decision support system on a daily interval and ask the grower to apply irrigation when necessary. For the evaluation of the model, five different irrigation scheduling treatments were applied on 27 plots: Rainfed, Irrigator Pro with matric potential sensors (Vellidis et al. 2008), Irrigator Pro with irrigation triggering based on temperature readings, Irrigator Pro with VWC, and a grower standard method. The Sentek Drill and Drop VWC soil moisture probes equipped with the AgSense Aquatrac Pro telemetry were used in the field-testing, which provide readings for soil moisture and temperature at 4”,8”,12”,16”,20”,24” at 30 minutes interval (Sentek 2003). The collected crop Evapotranspiration (ETc) data then led to the development of a Growing Degree Days based crop coefficient curve. The next step will be to include an integrated ET-based soil water balance model into Irrigator Pro’s available tools, which will use exclusively meteorological data and will be a model independent of soil moisture sensors. Lastly, the ET-based model will be utilized by SmartIrrigation Apps for peanut fields and will be tested and calibrated on 2022 field plot trials (Vellidis et al. 2016). This research will present data collected during the 2021 season.
