CropWaterUse

Use CropWaterUse App to assess the total water demand of an irrigated crop anywhere in Australia. 

CropWaterUse
Use CropWaterUse App to assess the total water demand of an irrigated crop anywhere in Australia. 

Users can modify a range of inputs that affect the total water demand of irrigated crops. These include:

• location
• crop choice
• planting and maturity date
• crop coefficient
• irrigation system efficiency
• irrigation deficit trigger
• the time period for analysis.

With these input variables, CropWaterUse is able to compare different crops and different planting dates across different locations within Australia. Output from the app includes reports and graphs of:

• crop life-cycle daily water use,
• total cumulative crop water use,
• total cumulative rainfall,
• irrigation frequency.

CropWaterUse has been designed to allow you to create projects that are of interest to you in planning your seasonal irrigation program, using the inputs that you specify.

The estimates of crop water requirements are based on the crop coefficients defined by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56 Crop evapotranspiration - Guidelines for computing crop water requirements, and independent DAF scientific research and validation. The crop coefficient (kc) is the ratio of crop evapotransipiration (ETc) to a reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo), and dependent on many factors such as evaporative demand, crop growth stage, ground cover, water availability, soil type and fertility and other growth parameters.

With these crop coefficients, CropWaterUse calculates the water use of the specified crop growth patterns using historical ETo SILO data for the location/s you specify.