What is my yield gap? Maximising Water Productivity on Irrigated Dairy Farms

What is the project about?

Working with farmers, researchers and agronomists the project team have established 10 farmer and service provider led ‘optimised irrigation sites’ on dairy farms in SA, WA, Victoria and NSW. Each site reference group has selected the irrigation skills and technologies they want to learn more about with a focus on the ‘yield gap’.

The ‘optimised irrigation sites’ are located on commercial farms, with sites located near Dandalup, Mount Compass, Mount Gambier, Mepunga East, Tatura, Maffra, Yarram, Tocal, Jelgowry and Casino.

The sites provide an opportunity for irrigators to check their operating practices against good practice whilst building skills in how to manage existing irrigation systems more efficiently. They also provide an opportunity to assess new irrigation technologies and decision support platforms such as IrriPASTURE and discuss their potential usefulness for their system. All sites are supported by experienced agronomists and irrigation consultants.

All sites are using the following technologies to better inform irrigation decisions: soil moisture monitors with telemetry (at least 3 per site), site rain gauges with telemetry (at least 1 per site), water balance platforms IrriPasture (for pasture) or IrriSAT (for crops), Pasture.io (validation of NDVI as an accurate pasture monitoring tool) and SWAN Systems daily weather notifications (BOM 3 or 6 km grid modelling).

For further information down load the fact sheet or Cath Lescun, Project Leader. Contact details in downloadable PDF.