A new app developed by Horticulture Innovation Australia, in cooperation with the Yield, offers farmers a cheap and easy way to save water and money when irrigating their crops. The app gives an estimate of the crop's water use and soil moisture using area-specific information from the Bureau of Meteorology. In its current form, the tool is mostly attuned towards use with brassicas, carrots, lettuce and leafy vegetables. The app was trialled by a group of growers in Queensland and Tasmania. Rob Salmon, from vegetable seed company Bejo Seeds in Tasmania, said it was raising plenty of questions about evapotranspiration or dealing with water that escaped from a plant. Developers are currently modifying the app to include a function that estimates the level of evapotranspiration seven days in advance. "We need to better understand how much we can deficit irrigate," he said. "So if the literature says this crop needs 40 millimetres of rain, or 40 millimetres of irrigation, can you get 90 per cent of the expected yield if you put on 75 per cent of that irrigation? In this case we're trying to match the supply with the demand of the plant." Source - abc.net.au