We collected disturbed and undisturbed soil samples from 31 agricultural farms which were participating in the LIFE ViVaCCAdapt project - Adapting to the impacts of Climate Change in the Vipava Valley. Three soil samples were recognized as silty clay loam, four as loam, one as clay loam, and 23 as silt loam. In this study, we aimed to identify potential differences in calibration functions resulting from two different calibration procedures using undisturbed and disturbed soil samples. Soil moisture probe readings were verified by gravimetric determination of the soil water content. We found that the factory calibration of the MVZ 100 probes were inaccurate in dry soils, where they considerably overestimated soil water content. For the two different calibration approaches using undisturbed and disturbed soil samples, within the range of plant-available water (excluding measurements in saturated and very dry soils), we did not detect significant deviations in the shape of the calibration function. For future work we suggest, that the method using undisturbed soil samples is used to perform soil-specific calibration. The method using disturbed soil samples in intensive and very time-consuming. We also found that for effective irrigation special attention needs to be paid to the determination of soil water retention properties, in addition to using a soil-specific calibrated probe.
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