Adelaide Plains’ growers have faced floods and now drought, but that hasn’t dampened their efforts of making changes 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, ‘Land & Water Management on the Northern Adelaide Plains: Producers Sustaining and Enhancing Long-term Productivity’.

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

Sponsored by Virginia Horticulture Centre and jointly funded by PIRSA Horticulture, the National Landcare Program and the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board, 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.

Starting in 2004 with then coordinator Bill Binks, the project aimed to investigate the best irrigation practices for growers in the region and then demonstrate to them how they could adopt these methods.

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 broad acre annual and perennial, 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.

“I’ve been able to investigate what monitoring probes worked best for different areas,” Jeanette said.

“I’ve 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 Irrigation Recording and Evaluation Service is another area of the project Jeanette will be encouraging growers to embrace.

“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,” she said.

“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.”

Jeanette says while the project has ended, she hopes that future support from PIRSA Horticulture and NLP under a proposed new Landcare Project will enable her to continue helping growers realise the benefits of new irrigation practices and monitoring through future hands on workshops.

“It’s important that we all learn from each other, and I think growers can learn a lot from sharing their information, such as what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them,” she said.