ISHS Acta Horticulturae 278: Symposium on Scheduling of Irrigation for Vegetable Crops under Field Condition
REMARKS AND COMMENTS ON IRRIGATION PROBLEMS |
| Author: | L. Cavazza |
| Abstract:
Scientific congresses are in a certain sense the milestones of progress. One hears reviews of known principles, eventually reorganized in a wider, more organic framework, or expressed in a more correct form. Some instruments and methods are dropped and others are repeatedly recovered in attempts to improve their performance through the application of new technologies, especially electronics. Recent brilliant innovations (e.g., the TDR or remote sensing techniques) attract the attention of researchers. Changes in the trend of research are often sensed, with emphasis on certain lines of development or emerging objectives. Irrigation scheduling is thought of by researchers as a goal of their efforts, a kind of dream. For about four decades devices that automatically supply water to crops, such as self-irrigating pots or tensiometer-controlled sprinkler plants, have been developed, manufactured and advertised. Over this period there has not been a congress without a paper supporting a certain method or device to schedule irrigation. As a matter of fact most of the many methods proposed have never spread to an appreciable extent and been established in common practice. The actual applications, still limited but frequent, seem to develop mainly in two major directions: (a) the improvement of sophisticated scheduling models requiring a territorial organization complemented by simple information or adaptation to local field conditions; or (b) the development of very simple scheduling methods based either on visual or empirical observations of the crop, growth stage, and indicator plants or on very simple measurements like rainfall alone, etc. In general the requirements for a scheduling method refer to:
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