Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** crop irrigation accounts for an…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** crop irrigation accounts for an estimated 80-90% percent of all water used nationwide. Drying conditions in arid agricultural regions may require greater crop production in humid climates, a change that is already underway in the U.S. Humid-region irrigation provides only a portion of crop water requirements and mostly serves as a buffer against rainfall variability and timing, which significantly impact crop yields in the eastern U.S. Increased irrigation in the eastern U.S. Could lead to significant increase in food production for relatively little water. However, inefficient irrigation leads to a host of environmental concerns. Because most irrigation occurs during dry, hot periods when river and lake levels are low, even small amounts of irrigation can have an outsized impact on water supply. Furthermore, inefficient irrigation can remove fertilizers from the root zone where plants use them. This results in excess production costs for growers and pollution to water resources. Precision irrigation and nutrient management can reduce these problems by making sure that the right amount of water and nutrients are applied, at the right locations and at the right time. However, grower adoption of precision irrigation and nutrient management remains low, largely due to perceptions that IT has little economic benefit. This project will develop an integrated computational modeling process that better simulates and quantifies the benefits of precision irrigation and nitrogen management in humid regions under climate change. This process will 1) integrate commercially-available sensors and machine learning to predict conditions of nitrate leaching under different irrigation treatments, 2) simulate crop growth under different precision irrigation and nutrient management strategies and 3) model grower adoption of these strategies under different scenarios of climate, market conditions, and grower preferences. Our study locations in eastern virginia have ideal climatic and soil conditions to study these issues. We will develop data-driven models that predict nitrate leaching, which is costly and challenging to observe directly, based on data from commercially-available sensors that monitor soil moisture and electronic conductivity. We will then develop computational models to simulate nitrate leaching and crop yields using traditional and precision irrigation methods under different scenarios of future climate change. Finally, we will develop economic models of grower adoption to simulate how grower objectives impact the use of precision irrigation and nitrogen management technologies. We anticipate that this research will lay the groundwork for a number of long-term and wide-ranging impacts in the future. This project will develop an integrated modeling process that can better capture the agronomic and economic benefits of improved water and nitrogen management while accounting for the barriers that have limited grower adoption of these approaches. Our meth, OD for characterizing nitrate leaching through the use of soil electronic conductivity sensors will allow this widely-available technology to be leveraged for greater impact in both agricultural production and research. Calibrated models of crop production and grower adoption will serve as tools to design and evaluate improved strategies for precision irrigation and nitrogen management as well as incentive programs that could encourage their growth among users. Ultimately, we aim to follow up this research project with continued extension and outreach efforts aimed at encouraging the adoption of precision water and nutrient management. We expect that these results will help inform additional research activities that can incorporate broader aspects of crop management, such as tillage practices and crop rotations. While our work will be conducted on corn in virginia, the methods we develop will be generally applicable to other crops and humid regions as well.