Australian cotton industry
 

Client :	Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Location:	Queensland and Northern New South Wales.

Cotton growers require continual updates of information on climate for pest, disease and irrigation management. The estimation of crop water use from climatic data may be achieved using field based computerised weather stations. The information collected and processed must be readily available to crop managers.

EIT provided a network of 15 weather stations over an area exceeding 50,000 Km2 connected by modems to a central computer. Each station reports general weather data, wind characteristics for pesticide spray management and estimated crop water requirements. The system provides integrated software for automatic network dialing, data management, text and graphics reporting.

The stations provide ‘real time‘ radar plots of wind. This information can be used to determine the suitability of conditions for pesticide application. Historical data includes temperature, RH %, solar radiation, wind direction, wind speed and rainfall.
 

Horticulture
 

Project:	Plant disease forecasting and irrigation scheduling.
Client :	New South Wales Department of Agriculture
Location:	Northern New South Wales.

A network of nine EIT, land line modem and GSM modem linked weather stations capable of measuring temperature, humidity, leaf surface wetness, solar radiation, wind run, rainfall and evapotranspiration.

Plant disease forecasting.

New South Wales Agriculture uses the weather data to provide weekly plant disease infection levels for banana diseases. Individual banana growers use the forecasted infection data to schedule plant disease spray programs.

Irrigation scheduling

Information from the weather stations is also used to estimate the crop water requirements of a range of crops grown throughout the network area.

New South Wales Department of Agriculture EIT Automatic Weather Station Network

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