Wednesday, 13 May 2026 Weekly Irrigation Requirements Northern Victoria Hello Irrigators, This is our final update for the 2025–26 irrigation season, wrapping up with forecast rain expected across the GMID over the weekend and into next week. Thank you for your ongoing support throughout the season. We look forward to reconnecting in August [...]
A truffle farmer near Stratford was concerned about the recent rise of saline groundwater and the possible effects on his newly developed truffle farm. Agriculture Victoria Irrigation and Horticulture staff visited the grower to talk through tree husbandry, salinity in the Macalister Irrigation District, groundwater recharge and movement, as well [...]
A pilot interactive irrigation scheduling tool is now available on ExtensionAUS for irrigators to use, providing daily evapotranspiration (ETo) and rainfall data from the Bureau of Meteorology for any location in Victoria. The tool is updated daily showing the past 7 days, next 7 days and provides irrigation scheduling information [...]
The Agriculture Victoria Irrigation team in Maffra, with assistance from the West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority (WGCMA), developed and delivered an irrigation basics workshop to 19 dairy staff. The workshop was hosted at the Macalister Demonstration Farm (MDF) in March 2023, allowing a hands-on learning experience for the staff. A [...]
MID ETo Update 11th August to 17th August 2022 ____________________________________________ Flood irrigation interval for the last week was 27 days Spray irrigation amount was 9 mm of irrigation water for the last week The predicted weekly pasture water use: MID 15 mm, Bairnsdale is 14 mm, Orbost 13 mm and Yarram 14 mm [...]
In this recent webinar, Rob O'Connor from Agriculture Victoria discusses irrigation scheduling tools to achieve top yields and water use efficiency. Rob provides information on Evapotranspiration (ET) tools and services available to irrigators and shares results and learnings from using soil moisture monitoring equipment for more informed irrigation decision making. [...]
Evapotranspiration provides a relatively objective and reliable estimate of the water requirements of actively growing plants in a farm situation. Evapotranspiration information can be used by irrigators to more accurately schedule irrigations to help achieve top yields and improve water productivity. What is Evapotranspiration? Evapotranspiration is an estimate of the [...]
Tension measuring devices provide information about water availability in the soil. Soil tension can be used by irrigators to better plan when to irrigate in order to optimise plant performance and water productivity. Scheduling Irrigation with Tension Tension measures how tightly the water is held in the soil. It is generally [...]
As part of the Accelerating Change project in Northern Victoria, various soil moisture monitoring (SMM) devices were used over the last 3 years under surface irrigated pasture and other forages on farm to assist with improved irrigation timing. Key learnings SMM provides objective and useful information for irrigation scheduling and [...]
Technology used in irrigation scheduling is becoming more diverse and more sophisticated. Scheduling information can be gathered from variety of sources including weather stations, soil moisture monitoring devices, and plant sensors. Plant-based sensors work on the concept of using plants as a “biosensor”. Meaning, the plant is used as the [...]
