Challenges and opportunities in intelligent decision-making for the center pivot irrigation system in the US

Center pivot irrigation systems account for more than 50 % of irrigation systems in the US due to their ruggedness and versatility. The current center pivot irrigation management (i.e. determining when and how much water to irrigate) is mainly based on either statistically-based or process-based models, both involving multi-source data. These approaches have pros and cons. This paper mainly reviewed the existing precision irrigation research and talked about the four aspects of critical challenges and opportunities: scalability and data availability, measurement of plant water stress, model uncertainties and constraints, and producers' participation and motivation. Furthermore, some suggestions are provided to address the critical challenges, such as considering both water demand (determined by atmospheric dryness) and water supply (from root-zone soil moisture) with the mediation of plants (through stomatal functions and plant hydraulics) to indicate plant water stress, and so on. With the suggested improved techniques, precision irrigation decision-making can be scalable, economical, reliable, and practical for producers.