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Irrigation gains reflected in updated Overseer

Irrigation gains reflected in updated Overseer

Irrigating farmers and growers will soon have greater confidence in the outputs OVERSEER® Nutrient budgets (Overseer) generates with the release of the nutrient budget model’s new comprehensive irrigation module.

From late April, Overseer 6.2 will improve the ability to model a range of irrigation systems and practices, dramatically improving its ability to calculate N-loss for irrigated properties.

Overseer General Manager Dr Caroline Read says incorporating the breadth of irrigation systems and management in use today will allowOverseer to address a known shortfall.

“Our current irrigation module doesn’t reflect the diversity of irrigation systems and the influence irrigation practice can have on nitrate leaching. This limitation means gains that can be made through changing irrigation systems and practices are not fairly reflected through to N-loss,” says Dr Read.

The new 6.2 version of Overseer will address this by focusing on a wide range of irrigation systems, from centre and linear pivots, to long laterals, spray lines, solid set, drip-micro and border dyke. It will also account for how they are then used by accounting for how much water goes on and when.

Dr Read says being able to estimate nitrogen and phosphorus losses to the environment has increasingly seen Overseer become an important tool for regional councils as part of their role in managing water quality.

“The demand for Overseer has grown significantly in the past five years, particularly since the introduction of the National Policy Statement for Fresh Water Management as this requires regional councils to set water quality limits,” says Dr Read.

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IrrigationNZ CEO Andrew Curtis says irrigators will benefit from the new version, but need to plan ahead to ensure they are collecting the relevant information.

“Irrigating farmers and growers need to be thinking now about their data inputs and familiarising themselves with what is required. One of the really valuable things about Overseer 6.2 is that it includes backward compatibility which means older files can be read, but they will need to be updated to better reflect management practices. Full technical notes will be released with the module which will make it easy for growers and farmers to update files to fit your specific irrigation system,” he says.

But Mr Curtis sounds a warning about a probable change in N-loss results due to actual management practices been reflected in the results. “With more specific, accurate information being inputted, it’s likely some irrigators will see increased N-loss estimates for their properties. IrrigationNZ is aware this will cause some alarm but we are working with regional councils to ensure this does not become problematic for compliance. It is important we move to a more transparent and robust system as irrigators generally will benefit from having a more accurateOverseer assessment so they can then be rewarded for investing in performance improvements.”

An Overseer 6.2 roadshow will kick off mid March through to mid April to raise awareness and support uptake of the new irrigation module. Workshops are being organised with the regional councils in major irrigation areas to get early feedback from users ahead of the online release of Overseer 6.2

ENDS


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