Crops watering by phone

In Europe, irrigated agriculture is the chiefwaterconsumer for food production. Yet water resources are in limited supply. One way out of this problem is to take more care with the water we use, and reduce the estimated 60%water waste. Now, a phone app supplies farmers' water thirsty crops with the right amounts of water at the right times, referred to in the field asirrigationscheduling. An EU funded project, called WaterBee, is putting the system through its pace with a variety of crops in countries as far apart as Estonia, Italy, Spain and the UK. Its app gathers data remotely via sensors in the farmer's field. The state of play is then crunched by maths equations, which relay back to the app how much water should be released by the sprinkler systems.

The problem is that inefficient water irrigation wastes a great deal of water. "About 70% of the water withdrawn from rivers and ground water by humans is for agriculture," Andrew Thompson, a plant scientist at Cranfield University, UK, tells youris.com. He is working to save water using maths, technology and farming intelligence. The plan is to achievewater savingsof 40% while improving crop quality too.

To do so, "the goal is to add just the right amount of water using mathematical models. Too much water and it is going to drain out from the soil; too little and yourcrop yieldsgo down and you have problems withcrop quality," Thompson adds.

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• ICT for Agriculture & Forestry