Benchmarking water use efficiency and crop productivity in the Australian Cotton Industry

IrriSAT is a weather-based irrigation water management and benchmarking tool that uses remote sensing to provide site specific crop water use management information across large scales e.g. the entire cotton industry, at relatively low cost. This investment will further develop IrriSAT technology with a focus on: 1. Irrigation scheduling using real–time and forecast crop water use estimation and 2. Regional crop water use productivity benchmarking. Industry wide irrigation benchmarks will be established to assess current performance and monitor the rate of change in WUE. Using an on-line benchmarking tool, well defined, meaningful benchmarks will be calculated for comparisons. The IrriSAT crop productivity benchmarks will also be captured to complement the irrigation benchmarks and allow up-scaling over a larger area.