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K-State Today

August 22, 2011

Irrigation researchers receive blue ribbon award from national society

Submitted by Steve Watson

Norman Klocke, professor of irrigation engineering at the Southwest Research-Extension Center, Garden City, and Loyd Stone, professor of agronomy, were selected to receive a 2011 Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for outstanding educational material in the electronic and Web-based delivery category. The pair, along with two private computing specialists, received the award for development of the Crop Yield Predictor, a new computer modeling tool for irrigators.

The Crop Yield Predictor is especially useful for irrigators practicing deficit irrigation. Traditional irrigation scheduling assumes that the irrigator’s water supply will be able to fully irrigate the crop to produce maximum crop yields. But this is not always the case — especially in regions with dwindling water supplies. Using the Crop Yield Predictor, irrigators can forecast yields from alternative irrigation schedules and project optimum net economic returns.

Details of the Crop Yield Predictor can be found in the Technical Notes section of Applied Engineering in Agriculture, 26(3): 413-418, published in 2010.