Soybeans are becoming an increasingly important crop in Georgia where potential for yields and profitability is high. Because of our sandy soils and periodic droughts, to consistently achieve high yields soybean growers must use irrigation. Sound irrigation scheduling strategies and appropriate irrigation scheduling tools are needed to address the timing and amount of irrigation needed during the growing season. Irrigation scheduling has not been widely adopted by Georgia soybean producers because reliable and easy-to-use scheduling tools are not available.

The objectives for 2020 are to make updates and improvements to the app based on user feedback.

The long-term goal of this project is to develop an interactive evapotranspiration (ET) -based irrigation scheduling tool for soybeans which operates on a smartphone platform and that can be used to implement both conventional and precision irrigation. At completion of the project, the Soybean SmartIrrigation App will have a Georgia footprint but will be easily expandable to a regional or national footprint.