Soil & water monitoring tools

Science programme: Sustainable Land Use

The quest for development of sustainable strategies for maintaining and enhancing the value of the natural capital of the soils and waters of our horticultural production systems will be aided by two initiatives:

• The development of measurement and monitoring tools so that we can better observe soil functioning and plant growth
• The writing of quantitative computer models that can predict plant growth in response to weather, and that can provide risk assessments of the impact of horticultural production not only on the fruit’s traits, but also the soil and water environment.

New technologies, especially with electronic devices and wireless communication, have resulted in a burgeoning ability to measure continuously a range of biophysical processes at remote locations. Our data-richness is rapidly increasing our understanding of plant growth processes and soil functioning.

Both these initiatives, monitoing and modelling, will be enhanced through the use of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technologies.

We have developed new tools for the remote and continuous monitoring of soil and plant functioning.  These observations are providing us with a wealth of information from which we can optimise fruit growth and production, and ensure that irrigation and agrichemical management strategies are sustainable.

These tools include sensors for the remote measurement of plant’s canopy development, sap-flow measures of plant transpiration, the soil’s water content and nutrient status, along with buried devices that act like hidden ‘raingauges’ to measure the drainage of water through the soil, and the concentration of chemicals in the leachate.

Our devices are used in a range of our projects, as well in the projects of other researchers, both here in New Zealand , and in Australia , Tonga , USA , Spain , and Italy.