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On this field here we’re looking
at how we irrigate soybeans.
This is also part of the soybean
research verification program.
We split the field in half, and in
two divisions. One, we’re using
Arkansas irrigation schedule
following the research verification
program recommendations and
the other side, the only difference
we made is we are using an atmometer
to schedule the irrigation on the other side.
An atmometer is a really nice
tool to help understand soil
evapotranspiration, so I’ve got
an atmometer up here we’re
working on. I have some of these charts,
I’ll just pass them around, you can just kind
of look at them, but, here let me
have one. Basically you look up what kind
of soil you have and then you
reference off the stage of crop growth
and set your deficit. That’s our
trigger point for irrigation.
And these basically have to have
a canvas and ceramic plate
on top and this has been developed
to mimic the Evapotranspiration
from the leaf surface. This is
experiencing the same E.T.
that the plant is, so that’s basically
what it’s doing. So here we started it,
after we irrigated last,
it was full and we haven’t had a
lot of et and when the liquid level
gets to this mark, that’s our trigger
point for irrigation. So if it rains,
just say it rains a half inch and it all went in,
we would just slide our ring down a
half inch to account for that
precipitation. If it rains a lot
more than that and some
of it runs off, you have to
make a judgment call about how much.
But it really lets you know
where you’re at in the soil
profile when your trigger point
for your irrigation. So this is one
technique that we’re using
that we’re compiling to see
if it’s different than the
Arkansas irrigation schedule
which has been around since the
mid eighties.