Source: KANSAS STATE UNIV submitted to NRP
MICROIRRIGATION: A SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY FOR CROP INTENSIFICATION AND IMPROVED CROP PRODUCTIVITY
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1021229
Grant No.
(N/A)
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
W-4128
Project Start Date
Nov 21, 2019
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2024
Grant Year
(N/A)
Program Code
[(N/A)]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
KANSAS STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MANHATTAN,KS 66506
Performing Department
KSU NW Agriculture Research Center
Non Technical Summary
Although the irrigated land area utilizing microirrigation in Kansas is only 1 to 2 %, it is anticipated the microirrigated land area will continue to grow as water resources become more stressed and as the need for greater water productivity (more crop per drop) increases. Microirrigation is well suited for automation and has the ability to spoon-feed both water and nutrients just in time to the crop's root system through targeted delivery either through subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) or mobile drip irrigation (MDI).Both SDI and MDI systems can be combined with improved water management technologies such as remoting sensing of crop environmental parameters (weather, soil water, crop water stress, etc.) to improve overall irrigation management. Additionally, when irrigation management is improved, there are crop yield advantages that can be obtained when other cultural practices are concurrently improved such as through fertigation, hybrid selection, and/or plant density increases. In essence, the reduction in limitations from one limiting factor, moves the management needs to other factors and the cycle can continue indefinitely governed by economics and scientific knowledge constraints.Corn and grain sorghum are major feed grains in the region and are often irrigated to increase production. In some cases, the best economic and environmental strategy will be to reduce irrigation and this strategy may be imposed by either governmental or groundwater availability constraints. In other cases, the best strategy may be to intensify irrigated crop production on a smaller land area to increase the water productivity. Microirrigation is well-suited to both of these approaches for these crops.In this project, Kansas State University will continue its long-standing efforts to develop microirrigation methodologies suitable for Great Plains agriculture that are water and nutrient efficient and economically profitable. The project will involve field and laboratory research, computer modeling as well as technology transfer to get the technologies in the hands of producers..
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1111599202075%
4051510202025%
Knowledge Area
111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water; 405 - Drainage and Irrigation Systems and Facilities;

Subject Of Investigation
1510 - Corn; 1599 - Grain crops, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering;
Goals / Objectives
Develop and evaluate irrigation systems, designs, technologies, and management practices that are sustainable and can increase water productivity. Improve methods of irrigation scheduling that are particularly applicable for microirrigation. Develop, evaluate, and adapt models as tools to improve system design, management, and production. Expand technology transfer products for a diversity of stakeholders to promote adoption of water-saving irrigation strategies.
Project Methods
General procedures for Objectives 1 and 2.Field sites on deep silt loam soils at KSU-NWREC at Colby, Kansas and at the KSU-SWREC, Garden City, Kansas will be used to conduct field studies to accomplish the field research. Existing center pivot (CP) or lateral move sprinkler (LMS) irrigation systems along with subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) and mobile drip irrigation (MDI) systems will be used as dictated by specific study protocols. These systems are robust and reliable and have been modified to allow for statistically replicated experimental study designs. In most, if not all of the proposed studies, soil water within the profile will be measured periodically with a neutron probe to characterize water availability within the season and for determination of seasonal crop water use (i.e, the sum of seasonal change in soil water, precipitation and irrigation). Nearby K-State maintained automated weather stations will be used to document weather conditions and to calculate well-watered crop evapotranspiration. Phenological growth stages, plant characteristics as well as dates and durations of management practices will be recorded. Hand harvesting will be conducted of representative plot samples for most if not all of the row crop field studies, but may involve research-grade plot harvesters for forage or solid seeded crops. The hand harvesting will allow for determination of the various yield components (i.e., plants/area, ears or heads/plant, seeds/ear, and seed mass) which can be used to characterize yield formation process as affected by water conditions. Crop water productivity (WP) will be calculated as the economic yield divided by the measured crop water use. Statistical procedures to evaluate and separate treatment responses will include analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, linear regression and other appropriate procedures from PC-SAS Version 9.4 and JMP 10.Efforts to transfer the knowledge gained from the studies will focus on aforementioned methods described in the Audience Tab, specifically concentrating on internet delivery, field days and regional meetings geared to the producer level.As this is a multi-state project, the results of the Kansas efforts will be combined and compared with the results from other W4128 partners to enhance and expand the research knowledge base and to determine future research needs. Evaluation of impacts will also use results from informal meeting participant comment and surveys, discussions with industry staff and dealers about sales growth and market penetration, and state and federal statistical data related to cropping, water usage, and technology usage (e.g., USDA-NASS data). These data should be able to allow determinations of impacts as small as 5% growth with sufficient accuracy.Specific procedures for Objective 1:Field studies will compare typical sprinkler irrigation procedures to MDI and also SDI to MDI. respectively, in terms of crop yields, crop water use, soil water amounts, and crop water productivity.Kansas will pool and combine system developmental knowledge with other W-4128 partners to develop generic recommendations that are more robust when using these systems. In addition, various system design characteristic and crop row orientations will be examined in this project.Along with other W-4128 partners, Kansas will examine alfalfa production focusing on both crop production techniques and system design issues that can increase water productivity.Fertigation studies will be conducted with corn to improve overall water productivity and to lessen environmental hazards.The Soil Water Process Lab will lead a study to sustainably improve soil water storage using innovative biodegradable polymers that reduce evaporative losses and increase the time that soil water remains available to plant roots.Specific procedures for Objective 2:Field and laboratory studies will be conducted to improve irrigation scheduling using one or a combination of more than one of the following overall management techniques: weather-based, soil water-based or crop water status-based scheduling. It is anticipated that the more advanced scheduling techniques that are necessary for finely-tuned crop intensification will require the combination of techniques. Techniques explored in Kansas can be combined with knowledge from cooperating W-4128 to evaluate effectiveness and also to augment existing and future protocols.Specific procedures for Objective 3:Conclusions from field research are restricted by local environmental constraints and can be affected by many uncontrollable factors and thus more robust conclusions can often be augmented by modeling. In the proposed project, Kansas along with other W-4128 partners will use crop and hydraulic models and algorithms to improve crop management, and crop water productivity with microirrigation systems. The goals of these efforts are to improve environmental quality, crop production, performance and operation of irrigation systems and net farm income while ensuring the sustainability of our limited antural resources.Specific procedures for Objective 4:Internet-based delivery of information is the mainstay for modern technology transfer, and well-established websites will continue to serve as primary sources of information for many stakeholders. A variety of outreach strategies will be used to reach diverse audiences. Traditional extension/technology transfer methods (print and electronic fact sheets; field days; presentations at meetings for agricultural and horticultural producers; training events for county extension agents; Continuing Education Units (CEU) opportunities for irrigation professionals and crop advisors, mass media, technical sessions at conferences) will be complemented with newer/emerging methods (social media, YouTube, Twitter, and others) to reach traditional and emerging audiences.

Progress 11/21/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Producers ranging from large, technologically savvy operations to small, part-time or hobby farming operations. Technical service providers such as USDA-NRCS working to improve irrigation and salinity management on regional, state and national scales. Community of scientists and extension specialists in Kansas and also regional, national and international colleagues, particularly for those with semi-arid summer precipitation pattern. Water managers and regulators within the state and region. Policymakers at the local (e.g., GMDs and LEMAs), state (e.g., State agencies and legislators) and national (Federal agencies and Congress) levels. Rural and community interests and foundations. Changes/Problems: Some progress was delayed by the Covid19 crisis. A field site at KSU-NWREC that was to be refurbished was delayed until the anticipated date of March 2021 due to safety concerns associated with the installation procedures. However, supplies were acquired and items that needed fabrication were completed and put into storage pending installation. Four visiting scholars that were to help with the greenhouse installation were unable to be hired and travel to the main campus due to Covid19. The work was accomplished internally by KSU and it is hoped addtional visiting scholars can be accomodated in 2021. A salinity study with SDI on a producer-owned Water Technology Farms near KSU-SWREC was postponed until 2021 due to Covid19 concerns and due to uncertainty about canal water availability which was the primary source of the saline water. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? For the greenhouse facility development,two undergraduate students in Biological and Agricultural Engineering and one graduate student in the department of Agronomy were employed and received training. Undergraduate students received training in irrigation field research withsubsurface drip irrigation and/or sprinkler irrigation at field research sites at Colby,Kansas and Garden City, Kansas. A post-Doctoral researcher has been hired at KSU-NWREC to help with some SDI research with alfalfa. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Field research results were reported at a virtual field day held at the KSU-SWREC at Garden City, Kansas. Powerpoint presentations and written papers on MDI, SDI, and general irrigation practices were presented at the 32nd Annual Central Plains Irrigation Conference, Burlington, Colorado in February, 2020. Efforts were made to work with a student intern from the Ogallala Commons to develop additional extension materials concerning water conservation. Some technology transfer opportunities were negatively impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Field and laboratory studies will be continued as planned. An SDI field site at KSU-NWREC will be refurbished to allow for additional field studies. Additional field studies with corn will be initiated to examine alternative row spacings that might better utilize water applied by driplines spaced at 1.5 m. Studies delayed or impacted by the Covid19 crisis will be conducted or expanded to meet project objectives. One visiting scholar is planning to join in January and two visiting scholars are planning to join the research group in February to help with greenhouse and field work and to collect and analyze data for the evaporation suppression research. There will be a focus in the greenhouse research to fine-tune the rate of the biodegradable polymer. Particular focus will be placed in evapotranspiration partitioning and water use efficiency. Additional field experiments in summer crops will test the impact on soil evaporation and plant biomass production of treatments with and without the biodegradable polymer. A study in rootzone soil water redistribution and nutrient leaching will be initiated in a field with SDI near Moundridge, KS. The site has a water well reporting high content of nitrates and a group of K-State researchers will investigate the issue during the 2021 corn growing season.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Field research at KSU-NWREC at Colby was conducted to compare subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) to mobile drip irrigation (MDI) for corn production. Results indicated small yield advantages for SDI and less water use resulting in greater cropwater water productivity for SDI compared to MDI. A preliminary paper was presented virtually at the Amercican Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) annual international meeting. An additional MDI research study was established at KSU-SWREC at Garden City, Kansas to examine corn and cotton production as affected by deficit irrigation (approximately 50% of normal irrigation) when inseason application of fertilizers through the irrigation system is planned (fertigation). A virtual field day was conducted in August 2020 to highlight some of the new cotton research. Field research with intensification of corn production with SDI indicated that corn hybrid selection and increasing plant density were important in increasing grain yield and crop water productivity, but that increasing irrigation was not a requirement. A combination of road (visual) surveys and Division of Water Resource's databases (e.g., WIMAS) are being used to assess the current status (scope and geographical distribution) of SDI and other irrigation systems in southwest Kansas. This information will be used to inform anddevelop further research and extension efforts to transfer SDI technology to a diverse clientele. A new greenhouse research environment was developed for studying an innovative biodegradable polymer to reduce evaporative losses and increase water use efficiency. Establishing this research environment required renting greenhouse space in Throckmorton Hall in the Department of Agronomy, the acquisition of automated load cells for tracking water losses due to evaporation and plant transpiration, acquiring instrumentation to measure soil water content and environmental conditions such as light intensity and air temperature, and also the purchase of related supplies such as pots and fertilizer. A substantial amount of time was invested in designing the system, setting up the layout of the load cells, and connecting all the electronics to data logging systems. A pilot experiment was conducted to obtain some initial measurements about the performance of the biodegradable polymer. Preliminary results in corn suggest that water use efficiency can be increased by about 20% using the biodegradable polymer, which suggests that water that will typically evaporate can be taken up by plant roots to create more biomass. Additionalplot experiments in winter wheat were initiated in two locations: Ashland Bottoms and North Agronomy Farm near Manhattan, KS. There were 2 appliedtreatments of the biopolymer for winter wheat and data are being collected currently.. A web application for determining crop evapotranspiration from digital images and weather data was developed. The pilot web-app is available at https://andres-patrignani.github.io/etcrop/. A producer near Moundridge, Kansas that manages an irrigated corn operation has been identified as a beta tester of the tool. K-State partnered with a company, Ceres Imaging who provided remotely sensed thermal and multispectral images of four fields in the Garden City, KS area throughout the 2020 corn growing season to evaluate irrigation scheduling. Similar images were captured using a drone and a multispectral camera for comparison. The temperatures of three panels, one with a shallow pool of water, one painted grey, and one painted black, were continuously monitored. These measurements are used to convert the thermal imagery to crop canopy temperatures at high spatial resolutions. This information gathered over the corn growing season is now being combined with machine learning algorithms and will be used along with soil water, canopy temperature, and weather data in a multi-level statistical approach to predict future values of crop and soil water stress indices.This research will reveal differences in water stress at high spatial and temporal resolutions, allowing producers to make more informed management decisions and ultimately reduce their water consumption.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Mo, Y., G. Li, D, Wang, F. R. Lamm, J. Wang, Y. Zhang, M. Cai, and S. Gonga. 2020. Planting and preemergence irrigation procedures to enhance germination of subsurface drip irrigated corn. Agric. Wat. Manage. 242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106412
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Evett, S. R., P. D. Colaizzi, F. R. Lamm, S. A. OShaughnessy, D. M. Heeren, T. J. Trout, W. L. Kranz, and X. Lin. 2020. Past, present and future of irrigation on the U.S. Great Plains. Trans. ASABE 63(3):703-729.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Patrignani, A., Knapp, M., Redmond, C. and Santos, E., 2020. Technical overview of the Kansas Mesonet. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, pp.1-49.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lamm, F. R., D. M. OBrien, and D. H. Rogers. 2020. Using the K-State center pivot sprinkler and SDI economic comparison spreadsheet - 2020. In: Proc. 32nd annual Central Plains Irrigation Conference, Feb. 18-19, 2020, Burlington, Colorado. Available from CPIA, 760 N. Thompson, Colby, Kansas. pp. 135-143.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lamm, F. R. 2020. Thirty years of SDI research in the central Great Plains. In: Proc. 32nd annual Central Plains Irrigation Conference, Feb. 18-19, 2020, Burlington, Colorado. Available from CPIA, 760 N. Thompson, Colby, Kansas. pp. 114-134.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lamm, F. R. 2020. Management for reduced irrigation diversions. In: Proc. 32nd annual Central Plains Irrigation Conference, Feb. 18-19, 2020, Burlington, Colorado. Available from CPIA, 760 N. Thompson, Colby, Kansas. pp. 76-90.
  • Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: SDI in the Great Plains https://www.ksre.k-state.edu/sdi/
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Aguilar, J. and D. Rogers. 2020. Evaluation of Mobile Drip Irrigation (MDI) and Other Sprinkler Packages. In: Proc. 32nd annual Central Plains Irrigation Conference, Feb. 18-19, 2020, Burlington, Colorado. Available from CPIA, 760 N. Thompson, Colby, Kansas. pp. 48-57.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Oker, T.E., Kisekka, I., Sheshukov, A.Y., Aguilar, J. and Rogers, D., 2020. Evaluation of dynamic uniformity and application efficiency of mobile drip irrigation. Irrigation Science, 38(1), pp.17-35.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Wiederstein, T., Sharda, V., Aguilar, J., and Sharda, A. 2020. Application of remotely sensed imagery and spatio-temporal modeling for irrigation scheduling. Poster presented at Kansas Governors Water Conference, Nov. 9-10, 2020. (Virtually-held).