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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Columbia, Missouri » Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research » Research » Research Project #432367

Research Project: Improving Irrigation Management and Water Quality for Humid and Sub-humid Climates

Location: Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research

2019 Annual Report


Accomplishments
1. Demonstrated influence of irrigation pattern on effectiveness of furrow irrigation. Sufficient groundwater is available for effective surface irrigation in many areas of the Mid-South growing region of the U.S. However, producers commonly employ patterns such as every-other-furrow irrigation to allow them to irrigate fields in one set and thereby avoid the time and labor required to revisit the field to change sets. Because producers are concerned that yield could be reduced by the practice, ARS researchers in Portageville, Missouri, and university collaborators conducted a study during the 2014 through 2016 growing seasons to investigate the impact of different furrow irrigation patterns on cotton yield. Although questions about the impact of irrigating less than every furrow during an especially dry year led to the study, no extremely dry growing season occurred during the study. While yield loss due to waterlogging is a constant concern in the region and often causes producers to delay irrigation, no such losses were indicated. Documenting when drought stress and waterlogging are most likely to occur will allow farmers throughout the world to irrigate their crops more economically and efficiently, ensuring a stable supply of food, feed, and fiber.

2. Documented variety effects on cotton yield monitor calibration. Accurate yield monitor performance is essential to improving precision agriculture. Knowledge of which factors affect the agreement between measured cotton yields and those estimated with yield monitors must be improved to ensure that appropriate inferences are drawn from the harvest data. ARS researchers in Portageville, Missouri, and university collaborators analyzed data collected with two yield monitor systems, comparing monitor-estimated weights to observed weights in replicated cotton variety trials. For six site-years of data and three combinations of two site-years, correlations were sometimes observed between calibration errors and other factors, but no correlations were consistent across multiple studies. Additional data must be collected and analyzed to determine which variety-related properties affect cotton yield monitor errors and to allow the development of calibration adjustments based on those factors. This will allow researchers and farmers throughout the world to advance precision agriculture methods for cotton to ensure a stable supply of food, feed, and fiber.


Review Publications
Drew, P.L., Sudduth, K.A., Sadler, E.J., Thompson, A.T. 2019. Development of a multi-band sensor for crop temperature measurement. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. 162:269-280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2019.04.007.
Vories, E.D., Jones, A.S. 2018. Influence of irrigation pattern on effectiveness of furrow irrigation of cotton. Journal of Cotton Science. 22(3):153-161.
Pei, X., Sudduth, K.A., Veum, K.S., Li, M. 2019. Improving in-situ estimation of soil profile properties using a multi-sensor probe. Sensors. 19(5):1011. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19051011.
Veum, K.S., Parker, P., Sudduth, K.A., Holan, S.H. 2018. Predicting profile soil properties with reflectance spectra via Bayesian covariate-assisted external parameter orthogonalization. Sensors. 18(11):3869. https://doi.org/10.3390/s18113869.
Feng, A., Zhang, M., Sudduth, K.A., Vories, E.D., Zhou, J. 2019. Cotton yield estimation from UAV-based plant height. Transactions of the ASABE. 62(2):393-403.
Vories, E.D., Jones, A., Meeks, C., Stevens, G. 2019. Variety effects on cotton yield monitor calibration. Applied Engineering in Agriculture. 35(3):345-354.