Radio Transcript

Welcome to Agritalk

This week we are going to be talking about and Adelaide Plains irrigation project which shows us just what research and grower involvement can achieve.

Adelaide Plains’ growers have faced floods and now drought, but that hasn’t dampened their efforts to make change in order to  improve their irrigation practices.

Since 2004, irrigators have been actively looking at ways of sustaining their natural resources as part of a National Landcare project.

Coordinator of the irrigation management component of the project, Dr Jeanette Chapman, from Rural Solutions SA’s Irrigated Crop Management Service says the area requires a well managed approach to overcoming limitations to crop productivity and resource sustainability.

The project encouraged growers to monitor their irrigation practices and take down records to identify the impacts. This included trialling new monitoring devices in highly saline areas and identifying what practices works best for particular crops, soil types and drainage conditions in the area.

Jeanette says that by keeping good records growers can use the information to pin-point what they were doing right when they noticed good results on their blocks.
Various demonstration sites were set up within the region in annual and perennial broad acre, and glasshouse crops, where Jeanette installed soil water monitoring devices and tested for soil salinity levels.

She then evaluated this information, providing growers with the data and seeking their feedback on what changes they may need to make to ensure the sustainability of their resources and their crop.

Jeanette has been able to investigate what monitoring probes worked best for different areas.  She has also found situations where soil moisture may have been okay but the crops showed signs of water stress due to other factors such as salinity and disease.”
Using irrigation software, such as the Irrigation Recording and Evaluation Service is another area of the project Jeanette will be encouraging growers to embrace.

Jeanette says
“Grower’s find it hard to invest in technology, because their cost structure is so tight that they really concentrate on spending as little as possible on input costs.  Any new practices and monitoring devices will have to be simple and affordable to them.”

“This project has been so important in demonstrating the benefits and convincing them what’s good for their business.  It’s important that we all learn from each other, and growers can learn a lot from sharing their information, such as what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them.”

For further information on this story or any edition of Agritalk, please visit www.ruralsolutions.sa.gov.au, click on news, then radio.  You will find a transcript of the program along with lots of handy links to the things discussed.

Information kindly provided by Jeanette Chapman.