A new smart, precision irrigation system will be unveiled at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) meeting in Rome. This news release from FIGARO, an EU-funded international project focused on developing new precision agriculture to improve irrigation management, will present an advanced precision irrigation DSS system at the special meeting this week.
The FIGARO platform V1, a decision support system for water and fertilizer irrigation, acts as a SaaS platform, periodically running leading and approved crop models to provide farmers with on-line recommendations regarding the best irrigation and fertilization schedules for their farms. Data is provided for specific crops and soils, water and climate conditions.
In order to make the recommendations precise, the platform is connected to real-world sensors, and collects environmental and crop-growth data from a wide variety of in-field and remote sensors and data sources including soil moisture, water meters, satellite images and weather stations. The data are fed automatically or manually into the DSS platform models and supply the crop module operating on real-time data.
“As we enter the third year of the system’s development, we are proud to present the highly innovative and advanced precision irrigation DSS system,” said project coordinator Lior Doron, director of the Crop Management Technology department at Netafim Ltd., a world leader in drip and micro irrigation.
The system has already been tested in field tests carried out in nine European countries with very promising results and will be rolled out to farmers and other stakeholders in a series of workshops.