Soil Moisture Sensors in Row Crops

The adoption of soil moisture sensors to schedule irrigation in row crop production is growing, but at a rather slow pace. Between the two types of soil moisture sensors, volumetric (capacitance), and tensiometric, the tensiometric style probes have seen a much higher adoption rate in row crop production mainly due to their lower cost. The Mitchell County Extension agent implemented on-farm demonstration trials in three southwest Georgia counties in corn, peanuts, and cotton using three different style capacitance sensors from three vendors. All of the county agents and farmers gained knowledge of using capacitance style soil moisture sensors and that the data given to the farmers influenced their irrigation decisions. Results also showed that all of the farmers were more than likely to implement soil moisture sensors systems on their farm in the future.