Irrigation scheduling is an important decision problem in agriculture. The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to compare dynamic programming (DP) and reinforcement learning (RL) methods for identifying optimal starting irrigation strategies, when a limited amount of water is available for irrigation. Both of the optimization methods use the MODERATO simulator, which includes a grow...

Irrigation water quality became worst in terms of increasing its salinity and causes severe problems in many cultivated crop species, resulting in lower yield. In addition, the scarcity of irrigation water due to overuse or runoff is another limitation for increasing food and feed production. Saline water treatment technology offers potential solutions; however this technology is yet expensive ...

Irrigation underpins agricultural productivity. The purpose of irrigation is to match water supply to crop water demand. The effectiveness of irrigation depends on the quality of the timing and duration of watering events, also called irrigation scheduling. Most farmers use heuristic rules to determine irrigation events. This often leads to over-watering which results in lower crop yields and w...

BACKGROUND Although the use of potable water for wound irrigation is attractive in an austere environment, its effectiveness has not been tested. We sought to compare the effectiveness of potable water irrigation in reducing bacterial number with that of normal saline irrigation. METHODS We used an established caprine model involving the creation of a reproducible complex musculoskeletal woun...

The Indian Punjab has been heralded for its technical achievements but increasingly criticized for leveraging its success on the environment. Irrigation has been one of the main pillars of the Punjab's Green Revolution. The availability of water has pushed rice and wheat productivity to new heights. Cheap water policies have enabled farmers to exploit groundwater. Water tables are shrinking in ...

Precision irrigation in fuzzy control system based on crop water stress acoustic monitoring was designed in the paper. Moreover, conventional double fuzzy control model was found to carry out two work mode, normal irrigation and precision irrigation, which aims to both ensure normal growth of crops and achieve effective water-saving. Since five input signals affect output in different degree, t...

Empirical studies suggest that cost-share programs are unlikely to reduce exploitation of ground water and nonpoint-source pollution. By introducing an induced irrigation technology in our model, we find theoretically that the optimal amount of irrigation water and nitrogen fertilizer increases (decreases) when the increased rate of the marginal net economic benefits from their use with an indu...

A water use simulation for citrus (Citrus sinensis) was used to estimate the effects of climate, soil-available water, rooting depth, allowable depletion of available water, and partial coverage irrigation on the annual irrigation requirements. The soil in the study was excessively drained Candler sand (hyperthermic, uncoated Typic Quartzipsamments) of the Central Florida Ridge. Variation of an...

The impact of climate change on the ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea basin will be manifested mainly by a significant reduction in water resources, because of rising temperatures and lower rainfall despite the increase in heavy precipitation events. Water is a fundamental resource for the metabolic activities of plants in agriculture. Unfortunately this resource is available in limited quanti...

Automatic irrigation scheduling has been demonstrated using wired sensors and sensor network systems with subsurface drip and moving irrigation systems. However, there are limited studies that report on crop yield and water use efficiency resulting from the use of wireless networks to automatically schedule and control irrigations. In this 2011 study, a multinode wireless sensor network (WSN) s...