Precision Agriculture and Irrigation

Agriculture uses a significant portion of water consumption. Therefore, the policy of optimal management of water consumption is essential. To achieve this, it is necessary to improve the design and use of advanced technologies and management. Precision irrigation creates coordination between advanced irrigation management, monitoring and investigation of data, modeling, and control. The purpose of this system is to automatically and continuously adjust the irrigation application system to a desired performance, and account for any variability (temporal or spatial) in crop water requirements or water intake across the field. This article describes the latest hardware and software technologies for precision irrigation on both farm-scale and larger regional scales, such as soil moisture mapping, wireless sensor networks, and precision irrigation management. Finally, trends for advanced irrigation technologies are presented.