Business
4 July, 2023
Canefarm water saving tool
JAMES Cook University researchers have released an online tool allowing cane farmers to compare various irrigation management options that will cut electricity and water usage and boost profits.
Dr Brian Collins, who is a senior research fellow at JCU’s Agriculture Technology and Adoption Centre, said the Irrigation Rapid Assessment Tool (i-RAT) was designed for cane growers to explore the impact of changes in irrigation management on their paddocks’ productivity and profitability.
“This tool will make it easier for farmers to understand how they can save water and electricity without loss of cane yield under variable climates,” he said.
Dr Collins said the JCU research team developed i-RAT to make it easier for the industry to see how small, medium, and large changes in irrigation management could increase profit, save water, and reduce energy cost.
“i-RAT harnesses the power of computer modelling and combines it with the knowledge and experience of local cane growers and advisors to enable rapid comparisons of thousands of combinations of farm management scenarios, which are not possible to test in the field,” he said. Centre director Professor Yvette Everingham said i-RAT was a tool to connect financiers to canegrowers.
To use i-RAT, create an account on https://i-rat.net by using an email address.
