In September, the LSU AgCenter released a tool that aims to ease the calculation of irrigation practices for farmers across Louisiana.
The Drought Irrigation Response Tool, also called DIRT, was developed over a number of years with significant contribution from Stacia Conger, assistant professor of irrigation engineering at LSU. Conger and her associates used available science to figure out how much irrigation is needed over time during the irrigation season, and eventually DIRT became the infrastructure to hold that science.
The program takes in variables like soil type, planting date, crop type and location then pulls more data based on location to tell farmers frequency of irrigation and eventually related information like drought stage, Conger said.
“It doesn’t have all of the features we want it to have yet, this was just the initial version that we could get out with the AgCenter IT’s time that they were able to give to us,” Conger said. “Hopefully we’ll be competing for more grant funding to continue to advance it, add more crops to it.”
Source : Reveille
