Inflo - CRC for Irrigation Futures -
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Published on: 12/7/2005
Last Visited: 10/3/2006
Student Profile: Simon White
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Name: Simon WhiteHome Institution: University of Southern Queensland (USQ)
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In 1999, Simon completed a Bachelor of Applied Science (Rural Technology) at the University of Queensland.Finishing with First Class Honours, Simon was awarded a university medal and encouraged by university staff to start postgraduate studies.
Hungry for industry experience and determined to find his true passion, Simon postponed further study and ventured into the ‘real world'.Through his work in both public and private enterprise, Simon gained an interest in broad acre irrigation and found his calling.
In September 2002, Simon joined the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA) at USQ and commenced postgraduate studies investigating the application of regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) and partial root zone drying (PRD) in cotton under large mobile irrigation machines (centre pivots and lateral moves).
Simon's work was motivated by the continuing water shortages for irrigation and the need for research to find ways to improve water use efficiency (WUE) for cotton production under centre pivots and lateral move irrigation machine.
"Both RDI and PRD are irrigation strategies which aim to increase WUE by manipulating and maintaining soil moisture conditions within a range which reduces excessive vegetative growth and crop water usage, but has a lesser affect on crop yield and leads to an improvement in WUE," Simon explains.
Over the past three years, Simon has conducted both field and glasshouse trials, implementing a range of RDI and PRD treatments in cotton.
Field trial results show appropriately timed deficit irrigation can improve WUE over current commercial practises, but its success is influenced by other factors, most notably in-crop rainfall.
Simon was unable to find a response from PRD under field conditions and suggested it was due to the disruption of the soil moisture gradient from in-crop rainfall, high water holding capacity of the soils and macro-flow of irrigation water through cracks in the drying soil.
Glasshouse trials confirmed that a substantial level of soil drying would be required in cotton to cause a plant response to PRD, and soil moisture simulation modelling suggested there was a very low likelihood of this being achieved in the field.
Simon's research showed that PRD is difficult to successfully implement within a majority of the current cotton growing regions due to soil type and in-crop rainfall disruptions.Simon found that a significant improvement in WUE can be achieved with deficit irrigation, but influencing factors such as in-crop rainfall need to be taken into consideration.
Improvement of crop simulation models and climatic forecasting are required before the most suitable deficit irrigation strategy for a given season can be known and implemented.
Simon now works as a Postdoctoral Irrigation Researcher with the NCEA investigating the use of plant based sensors for improved irrigation scheduling.In doing so, he is collecting further data on deficit irrigation strategies under centre pivots and lateral moves to improve and validate current crop simulation models.
His current interest is in the use of remote plant sensing and variable irrigation application.He hopes one day that we can account for field variability in soil moisture availability and apply irrigation applications in response, to optimise the crop performance across the whole field and further improve WUE.
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