The irrigation workshop series that began in Orland will continue in Modesto on Thursday, May 4. Co-hosted by UC Cooperative Extension, the Fundamentals of Irrigation Scheduling workshops are designed to provide actionable information to growers. Senior Manager of ABC’s Field Outreach & Education Team, Tom Devol said they wanted to get back to basics with this year’s workshop series.
“We’re taking kind of a different approach this year; we’re going to go back to fundamentals of irrigation,” Devol noted. “A lot of times we do talks on cutting-edge things. This time we’re going to go back to much more fundamentals with a heavy focus on ET and scheduling.”
The Modesto workshop will be taking place at the Yara North America Incubator Farm. Several industry experts will be presenting information on evapotranspiration (ET) and how to leverage that data within irrigation schedules. Assistant Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist in Soil-Plant-Water Relations, Mallika Nocco will be providing in-depth information on a variety of aspects of ET.
“Evapotranspiration is a broad topic. There’s some confusion and there’s different types: ETo, ETc, ETa. She’s going to dig into all of those,” Devol explained. “Then I’m going to share on just using soil moisture monitoring. How to understand the difference between volumetric soil moisture, soil water tension, different types of sensors, how to make sense out of the data, and different approaches to it. I’ll dig in pretty deep on that. So those are kind of the core topics.”
Included in the Fundamentals of Irrigation Scheduling event will be a presentation on the Farm Water Advisor tool from Yara. Attendees will also have the opportunity to learn about incentives available through PG&E. “This is an area a lot of people I think don’t even know exists, that PG&E offers incentives on energy efficiency. So, we’re going to have a representative from TRC come out and speak about that. They’re the group that administers that plan for PG&E,” said Devol.
Listen to Devol’s interview below.
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