Michael Bradbery, Technical Lead ANZ for Syngenta Professional Solutions
Construction, establishment and maintenance of green assets consume significant budgets and demand successful outcomes. Advances in remote monitoring of green assets bring greater control and surety of positive outcomes.
Green assets such as tree and turf landscapes are the final step in many large and costly projects. Successful establishment of the vital green component of the project is critical, and vulnerable to damage or failure. Programming irrigation or water trucks is rarely based on actual soil conditions. This can lead to over-and-underwatering, and delayed establishment or failure. By incorporating wireless remote soil sensors into these landscape projects, resources can be applied when required, conserving water and labour without asset loss.
Lack of real-time data for soil moisture during establishment and maintenance is a common issue. Advances in weather forecasting data and apps, and in real-time monitoring sensors provide more accurate and site-specific soil information to ensure correct plant maintenance.
Syngenta’s continued investment is resulting in next generation digital technologies, such as SPIIO™ Soil Sensors, which can be used to create efficiencies and productivity gains for open space and turf managers. They allow turf professionals to make informed decisions with accurate, site-specific data which is regularly updated – and which can be accessed direct from their mobile phones. A SPIIO™ Soil Sensor can achieve all this, and the sensor installation and application set up takes only minutes.
Water Resource Allocation During Establishment
Green assets such as trees shrubs and turf have a specific soil moisture requirement during the susceptible establishment phase following planting. The use of in-ground soil moisture sensors to monitor real-time conditions can allow better allocation of labour and water resources to reduce plant damage or loss during this process. In ground remote soil sensors give actual soil moisture conditions which can only be assessed by labour intensive onsite assessments or guessed at from local weather observations.
Ongoing Management of Plant Health
Moisture management is obviously a critical component of ongoing maintenance, especially in turf and landscape assets. Improving irrigation application decisions will benefit plant health and save resources. Over application of irrigation can be just as damaging as under application, resulting in excessively wet conditions making soils susceptible to damage from compaction, root loss or anaerobic conditions such as black layer. Under application depletes root systems and conditions the plant for more frequent shallower irrigation resulting in a weaker less drought tolerant plant.
Figure 1. Soil moisture percentage tracked over summer showing rainfall and irrigation impacts, daily plant usage, evaporation and field capacity.
Saving Water
Using sensors can provide more accurate data to make irrigation decisions. Monitoring soil moisture during and after precipitation events helps determine how much water is enough in each soil or location. Determining the field capacity of the soil gives a baseline to measure against for future scheduling and observations. Observing the actual change in soil moisture content is far more useful than rain gauge or BOM records which are based on large areas and subject to wide variability.
This data can help answer questions like:
- What is field capacity at each site?
- What amount of rainfall or irrigation is required to reach field capacity in that soil?
- What effect did rainfall have at each location?
- Did the set irrigation achieve the moisture content target?
- How much does the soil type affect the target moisture content?
- Am I over or under watering?
Labour Efficiencies
If you or your colleagues have spent hours walking sporting facilities assessing moisture needs both visually and with moisture probes, you’ll easily be able to see the potential efficiencies of having constant data on soil moisture. Building the correlation of physical on-site assessments with data from in-ground sensors builds a more complete picture for moisture management.
Using In Ground Sensors to Monitor Field Playability
During periods of wet weather assessing field conditions across large council LGAs can be very labour intensive with physical inspections required for opening or closing each facility. With input from in ground sensors outdoor field coordinators have moisture percentage readings to their phones giving greater knowledge of conditions and rainfall impacts in each location. This can greatly improve efficiency of the process which may be required after each rainfall event prior to weekend sport.
GreenCast® Connect App
Monitoring soil temperature and many other parameters relevant to turf can be done via the Syngenta GreenCast® Connect app. It includes parameters that are not typical for an average weather app including Soil temperature, Evapotranspiration, Leaf wetness, Dew Point, Growth Potential etc. These and many other features are available on the basic free version.
Incorporating Soil Sensors
The use of sensors to identify the soil temperature, soil moisture and salinity from location to location or full sun to shaded areas can greatly assist decisions of inputs of water or product treatments.
SPIIO™ Soil Sensors can be placed at the desired root zone depth, are wireless and have a battery life of 3-5 years. A simple connection to the local mobile network transfers readings to the cloud service which can be accessed anywhere on your phone or through the web-based portal. This real-time data can be shared with all staff members or relevant parties to monitor irrigation function, irrigation setting requirements, rainfall impacts etc.
Figure 2. An example of a SPIIO™ Soil Sensor dashboard.
Existing customers have reported savings in time spent assessing moisture requirements, improved irrigation scheduling for deeper less frequent application and earlier awareness of plant irrigation needs
Poor Water Quality
For those using irrigation water that contains salts such as effluent supplies or can increase in salinity during dry periods monitoring soil salinity in real time can be a great tool. With the use of the SPIIO™ Soil Sensor you can set a warning level for salinity for when you need to act which may require a flushing irrigation cycle or transfer to another water source for irrigation use.
Using In Ground Data for Maintenance Application Timing
Soil temperature is the key marker of many preventative applications for protecting turf from weed germination and insect hatching. Common summer weed and insect emergence occurs from 13 to 18 degrees Celsius soil temperature. Using soil temperature from the Greencast Connect App and real-time data from the SPIIO™ Soil sensors provide the best information to time applications of what can be costly and critical annual treatments.
Light/Shade Data
The SPIIO™ Sensors being portable can be moved to sites where closer monitoring is required whether it is new sites or sites where growth issues exist. They can also be used to build data for visible light levels. If shade is impacting areas of the site and you need to prepare information for review, you can compare readings from a sensor placed in the shade and one in a comparable area of full sun.
Set Your Own Warning Parameters
Within the Greencast Connect App or web-based tools you can set the warnings for the levels you require. Whether moisture content, temperature, salinity or extreme weather conditions, you set the levels you desire for warnings. The warnings set by the user are then pushed through notifications to the mobile, app and web portal for immediate consideration.
SPIIO™/GreenCast® Connect Subscription
The sensors come under an annual subscription plan based on small to large volumes. With the sensor subscription the Pro version of GreenCast® Connect is included which inputs the sensor data into the App and Web Portal as well as providing other features.
Summary
Managing green assets across large sites or multi-site local government areas demand extensive resources which are increasing in costs. Using resources effectively and efficiently is paramount whether it be fertilisers, pesticides, water or labour. Technology that can assist with making improved decisions and achieving better outcomes or resource efficiencies are available. The GreenCast® Connect app and input from SPIIO™ soil sensors will enable facility managers to improve labour and resource efficiencies across their assets under management.
For more information on SPIIO™ visit syngentaturf.com.au or contact your local Syngenta Territory Sales Manager.
