The suitability of these methods for maintenance of high quality turf, particularly in traffic areas, needs careful examination. A challenge for managers is to match irrigation scheduling with turf water demands. These systems differ in the ease of use and degree of automation. The objective when using these systems is to schedule irrigation in order to maintain soil water content within desirable limits. A crop factor is an experimentally derived parameter which defines the plant water requirement as a percentage of the daily evaporative demand for water.
Crop factors depend on the genotype, irrigation system, season, and climate of the region.
This management technique depends on the availability of data for daily evaporation rates, and these can be measured using an evaporation pan or a weather station, or can be requested from your regional bureau of meteorology. Experience is a valuable thing but tools such as these can be very useful. Dr. Tim Colmer is a lecturer in Plant Sciences at The University of Western Australia. Dr. Colmer co-ordinates the turfgrass research at UWA, a program in collaboration with industry.