Crop Data Base

Linked to the Irrigation Water Demand Model IWD but also as a data base directly accessible as one of the OBJECT DATA BASES, WaterWare includes a collection (146 as of R6.1) of CROP data sets.

The listing of crops can be sorted (ascending or descending) by:

• Crop name;
• Group classification;
• Planting date (by month for the Northern hemisphere);
• CWR (average growing season crop water requirement)

The data set for a crop include in addition to the standard OBJECT HEADER and META DATA records

• A basic hypertext description of the crop (the hypertext window includes buttons for authorised user to edit the description text, and upload and integrate imagery in any HTML compatible format)
• Average, most common planting time (month, again assuming Northern hemisphere and a Mediterranean climate) and average growing period (in days);
• Basic physiology: annual water requirements, the FAO Kc factor, and an average rooting depth for an average adult plant;
• Economic basics: average yield in t.ha, production costs, market price (average, minimum and maximum range for a recent reference year);

• Time series data: the button TimeSeries leads to a separate editor and display page for time series data. These are organized in ten intervalls covering the growing period specified on the main page. For example, for a perennial spcies such as a tree, the period is 365 days, so each slor represents 1/10 of this period or 36.5 days; for a fast growing seasonal vegetable, lika salad with 60 day growing period, each slot would represent again 1/10, i.e., 6 days.

The four time series avalable include:
• CWR, physiological water demand, the represents the water used by a plant under optimal environmental "stress-less" conditions, in mm/day.
• FAO Kc factor over time
• Drought tolerance (expressed as MAD: Management allowed Depletion (of soil moisture)
• Dynamic shading factor (0 = no shading, 1.0 = complete shading of the underlying soil surface).