Pistachio Irrigation Monitoring and Scheduling Demonstration - Realtime Field Data

MONTHLY REPORTING/MONITORING (monthly posting on FNRIC website):

  • SOIL MOISTURE TENSION - Irrometer Monitor logger records Watermark electrical resistance blocks and pressure transducer tensiometers every hour. 18, 36 and 48 inch depths. Downloaded monthly. DATA
  • SOIL WATER CONTENT – Neutron probe readings every foot down to a 9 foot depth. DATA
  • TREE STRESS – Pressure chamber measurements of stem water potential using the “wet rag” method. DATA
  • APPLIED IRRIGATION – In-hose flowmeter at monitoring site recording applied gallons.
  • AERIAL IMAGERY – CERES flyover coinciding with above measurements providing whole orchard view of WATER STRESS (based on canopy temperature), NDVI (normalized differential vegetative index, canopy size and vigor) and chlorophyll content. DATA

CONTINUOUS MONITORING/WEB-BASED REPORTING (weekly posting on FNRIC website):

  • SOIL WATER CONTENT -- PureSense Jain Logic with SENTEK Tri-scan (“Drill & Drop”) capacitance probe measures soil water content, temperature and salinity to 46” depth, pressure transducer recording actual psi and run-time in hose at site. DATA
  • PLANT-BASED TREE STRESS – Phytech dendrometers measuring trunk diameter every 15 minutes to calculate daily “shrink/swell” and growth of the tree. DATA
  • CIMIS ETo/Calculated Pistachio ET, applied water for all sites – ET calculated from closest CIMIS station potential ET (ETo) times Dave Goldhamer crop coefficient, Kc and applied water estimated by Jain Logic hose pressure and runtime. DATA

WEB-SITE HOSTING:

  • UC Davis Fruit & Nut Research and Information Center (FNRIC)