Soil Water and Plant Canopy Sensor Technologies to Optimize Water and Nutrient Use.

In many respects, agricultural technology is doing things now that were only imagined 20 to 30 years ago. Yet, grower tools that provide information and actionable knowledge on water and nutrient availability still remain a challenge. Clearly, rapid development of data transfer and processing platforms to date has provided rich maps of grower fields with overlays of location-specific information but their utility is still limited by our ability to accurately measure the parameters that are the foundation of this knowledge. To supply enough water and nutrients to crops, growers must know how much water is available and how that availability will change with depletion. Currently, systems only tell half the story. This talk will focus on the emerging opportunity of combining robust soil water content and water potential measurements in the field to get a complete picture of soil hydraulic properties and behavior. And, along with electrical conductivity and plant surface reflectance indices, how it is possible to use this information to optimize water and nutrient use. Indeed, with these data, it may even be possible to lighten the grower decision-making burden by using machine learning. We will briefly explore these opportunities and whatÕs necessary to get there.