Bnchmrkng Adv Irrigation Schdlng for Peanuts in AL, FL and GA while evaluating plating date and irrigation impacts on new peanut cultivars, yield, grade, aflatoxin, and water requirements and use of drone technology for management decisions

The experiment carried out in the 2016 growing season on a 330 ac commercial peanut field. The field is located near Leary, GA. Initially the field was divided into Irrigation Management Zones (IMZs) by using field properties such as soil electric conductivity, elevation data, hydrology data which simulate how the water flows within the field and historical aerial images of the field as well. The IMZs were delineated by using the EZZone software. This software is a free online resource for delineating Agricultural Management Zones from univariate georeferenced data. After IMZ delineation, the field was divided into alternating conventional irrigation and dynamic VRI strips. The total number of strips was eight and the width of each strip was 162 rows (Figure 1). In four of the eight strips, irrigation scheduling was based on lrrigator Pro recommendations and water applied uniformly. lrrigator Pro is a computerized expert system designed to manage peanut irrigation and pest management decisions. The version of lrrigator Pro used in this study uses precipitation and soil temperature to make irrigation decisions. It is widely used in the southeastern USA by consultants and some farmers to schedule irrigation. It is used regularly by the grower who cooperated with us in this study as well. The other four strips were divided into IMZs which were irrigated individually based on UGA SSA recommendations.