Farmers try to improve their irrigation practices by using daily irrigation recommendations—the Vipava Valley case, Slovenia

Cvejić, Rozalija (author), Černič Istenič, Majda (author), Honzak, Luka (author), Pečan, Urša (author), Železnikar, Špela (author), Pintar, Marina (author)

Based on the latest climate change projections for the 21st century, high exposure to climate change is expected in Vipava Valley, Slovenia’s sub-Mediterranean agricultural area. An irrigation-decision support system was developed and implemented on 35 farms in the period of 2016–2020 to increase agricultural climate-change resilience. Farmers have shifted from irrigation scheduling based on experience and assumptions to irrigation scheduling based on real-time soil-water monitoring to partially implement irrigation based on irrigation-decision support systems. Simulations show that if farmers continue to practice justified irrigation applications and gradually transition to replenishing soil water reservoir content to 85%, they will achieve a 25% reduction in total irrigation-volume consumption, a 24% reduction in energy requirements and a 24% reduction in CO2 emissions. Future agricultural innovation policies should extend actions beyond the financial to those facilitating the establishment of multidisciplinary agricultural innovation teams with corresponding infrastructures to better enable the mutual exchange of knowledge, learning and development of a transparent institutional framework.

• Language: English
• Keywords: irrigation-decision support system, irrigation scheduling, climate change
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 27 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 10, iss. 9, art. 1238
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134317
• UDC: 631
• ISSN on article: 2073-4395
• DOI: 10.3390/agronomy10091238
• COBISS.SI-ID: 26263043
• Publication date in RUL: 05.01.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Agronomy
• Shortened title: Agronomy
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2073-4395
• COBISS.SI-ID: 522953241

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 01.09.2020

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: namakanje, klimatske spremembe, monitoring, svetovanje, načrtovanje namakanja, podpora pri odločanju