—Ross Courtney's story
—Photo and video by TJ Mullinax
Irrigation specialist Maria Zamora Le has been with Oregon State University for three years, but on May 8, she made her first public appearance specializing in the tree fruit industry at a field day at Washington State University near Prosser. gave a presentation.
Zamora Le, assistant professor of bioecological engineering and irrigation specialist at OSU Extension in Corvallis, was hired in 2021 with funding from the Oregon Legislature to help improve the efficiency of the state's agricultural water use. Ta. She specializes in irrigation scheduling. So far, she has devoted most of her time to berry crops and pastures.
She explained how to use sensor data to schedule irrigation to about 70 people who attended a Spanish-language field day at WSU's Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center's Rosa Research Orchard.
Zamora Re uses a tensiometer, which is a water-filled tube with a porous tip to measure soil water tension, and a reflex, which uses electrical pulses between conductor rods to measure the amount of water in the soil. The rate measuring sensor was shown to the group. Both tools are commonly used in the fruit tree industry and produce data that can be viewed on a computer or mobile phone screen.
The rest of her presentation will be about how to make sense of that data, specifically how to maintain water beyond the maximum permissible depletion point, the maximum permissible depletion point at which trees experience water scarcity. I explained about it.
The idea, she says, is that soil moisture information should help determine when to irrigate and when not to irrigate.
Other speakers will include WSU faculty who will discuss water use in horticulture and discuss how software and sensors can provide information and even automate the irrigation process described by Samora Le Three vendors were included.
