Project start: 01.01.2016
Project end: 31.12.2018
Sponsor: Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture

Within the project GSEHEN, the Department for Vegetable Crops of the Geisenheim University develops a practically applicable FOSS implementation of an irrigation decision support system based on the Geisenheim Irrigation Scheduling (GS). The major goals of this project are the theoretical quality assurance of GS parameters, and the formulation of prerequisites for a practically and scientifically sound implementation of GS in the software. The theoretical proof of GS parameters is lead via experiments using the eddy covariance technique. With this meteorological method possible differences between estimated and actually measured evapotranspiration of plant canopy in open field can be assessed. For a sound software implementation of GS, the main tasks are the aggregation and publication of GS parameters in the form of an openly available online database as well as the documentation and implementation of the algorithms and parameters needed for software based realization of GS. The software and documentations will be publicized under an open source license. This is to guide and promote high-quality implementations of GS in any kind of software which match the general scientific claim. With this, the project GSEHEN secures the practical application and scientific foundation of GS for future operation.

Project start: 01.01.2012
Project end: 31.12.2015
Sponsor: Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture

In the context of the project “GS-Mobil”, promoted by the German Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE), the Geisenheim Institute of vegetable crops develops, in cooperation with the German Weather Service (DWD) and Helm-Software, an updated version of the Geisenheim Irrigation Scheduling for vegetable crops. Currently the Geisenheim Irrigation Scheduling is balancing plant and soil water use, irrigation and rain fall, to recommend irrigation events. Therefore the user needs to continuously put culture specific data in this system. GS-Mobil aims to minimize the need of user supplied input, hence, to model the water needs of the plants in context of their growth and development depending on the weather conditions. This model is going to be the heart of a mobile app programmed by helm-software, which is supplied with weather data from the German Weather Service. The app will provide reliable irrigation recommendations to vegetable producers all over Germany. With this project the vegetable irrigation will become more user friendly, resource efficient and over all: mobile.