Vintel Orchards

A decision support tool for irrigation management of your orchards trees.

Crop modellingAlmondsPeachApricotOlive treeWalnutIrrigation management

Description

Optimal irrigation of fruit and nut trees is essential to maximize yield and optimize fruit quality. To apply the optimal irrigation, growers must consider multiple factors related to the crop, soil, irrigation system, production objective, and weather forecasts. Growers need to make decisions every week for multiple fields with different characteristics, which makes irrigation management is extremely complex and time-consuming. The decision-making process can be facilitated by using the Vintel Orchards® mobile application developed by itk. Vintel Orchards® is an application enabling growers to easily enter their field characteristics, compare their irrigation practices to optimal irrigation and receive alerts when the fields are not optimally irrigated.


Progress

80

Testing phase by growers underway

Objectives

The main objectives of this project are to develop user-friendly mobile applications for scheduling irrigation for multiple crops based on water demand and weather forecasts, to facilitate deficit irrigation practices in orchards, and provide recommendations for optimal irrigation


Development of a DST for growers

to facilitate irrigation scheduling across multiple fields

Accurate calculation of irrigation requirements

to maximize crop yield without wasting water

Use deficit irrigation practices

to save water and money

Verify your decisions

by comparing your irrigation practices with optimal irrigation and receive alerts when a field has not received optimal irrigation

7-day Irrigation forecast

Water status management according to your production objective

ETc and Rain forecast

Future improvements

The application will be improved based on grower’s requirements that could be:


Improve irrigation management

by taking into account canopy variability in the orchard using satellite images

Implement field information

from flow meters: soil moisture sensors and pressure chamber

Manage the irrigation of other crops

Nitrogen Management

Partners

The application was developed by itk in collaboration with irrigation experts from UC Davis in California. The project was partially funded by the BPI project.

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