App Tracks Soil Moisture

The SoilWaterApp or SWApp, has been called Australia's most advanced soil moisture-calculation tool. Developed by USQ with funding by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), SWApp aims to increase crop yields

The University of Southern Queensland's National Centre for Engineering is close to releasing a new soil-moisture app which helps farmers make a more informed decision about when they should plant.

The SoilWaterApp or SWApp, has been called Australia's most advanced soil moisture-calculation tool. Developed by USQ with funding by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), SWApp aims to increase crop yields and profits by helping growers make more informed cropping decisions such as whether to plant or fallow, and how much pre-plant nitrogen to apply.

The app works by using climate data from the Bureau of Meteorology, and on-farm rainfall figures as well as crop-residue cover and soil-type information entered via a series of menus.

The app requires a starting value of moisture, given as a percentage of a full profile at harvest, and then looks at climate and rainfall data over the fallow period. It can also incorporate estimates of soil water from sources like EM mapping, capacitance probes and soil coring.

The app's key developers include Dr David Freebairn and Dr Brett Robinson from the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, part of USQ's Institute for Agriculture and the Environment (IAgE).