National workshop to initiate establishment of national standards for irrigated crop water balance and ETc field methodologies

Product Information

A national workshop was convened by National Program for Irrigation Research and Development (NPIRD) to establish the need for national standards for irrigated crop water balance and crop evapotranspiration (ETc1) field methodologies. The workshop was attended by representatives of relevant state agencies and federal organisations. Participants all had a sound understanding of the use of ET in their organization at a technical level and were also able to represent the organization at a policy level.

The findings of the workshop showed that there are sufficient reasons and levels of agreement to pursue national standards that will result in:

• Outputs able to be compared across farm/district/regions/catchments/states so that values have common meaning, particularly for irrigation scheduling and design
• Improved confidence in the estimated water use values of different crops. This information will be critical during water allocation discussions.
• Greater ability to institute continuous improvement in a standardized manner as measurement technology and estimation procedures improve
• Bureau of Meteorology more able to effectively fulfill its role as a national service provider by providing client focused information using a common methodology.