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Soil moisture probes

Date:
By MFMG Admin

Project code: No code

Project manager: MFMG Team

Project duration: June 2018 to January 2021

About the project

Soil moisture probe data can be a useful tool to see how much moisture is in the profile, where the soil moisture is lo-cated within the profile and where the plants are pulling moisture from.


Taking the information being captured below the soil and turning this into more informed decisions around crop man-agement takes the probe data from something that is useful to something that is usable.


There are critical times of the year when the soil moisture probe data can be utilised to make decisions. The im-portance / relevance of this timing will depend on both the location and also the soil type and water holding capacity of that soil.
The data can be utilised and combined with climate data to make decisions around summer weed control, time of sow-ing, nitrogen application, fungicide application and for grain marketing and decisions around end use of the crop (harvest or hay).


Work has been done under the “Building Farm Resili-ence” project to look at the drivers of wheat yield in the South East of South Australia. As part of this project, the importance of soil moisture probe data and spring forecast has been explored in final wheat yield. This issue is explored further in the document “Drivers of wheat yield across the South East of South Australia” with key findings showing that in high rainfall environ-ments in the lower south-east of South Australia, that the amount of soil moisture at the end of the season isn’t as critical as it is in medium rainfall environments. The importance of stored soil moisture also depends on the soil type and water holding capacity of those soils.

This project is funded by:

Logo-Simple-web

This project is delivered in partnership with:

Alpha Group Consulting

Project Resources:

2021_Soil Moisture Probe _Fact Sheet

2019_MFMG Soil Moisture Probes - September_Report