Estate Canepro

• CanePro is a multi-user application designed specifically for the requirements of large commercial sugar estates.
• CanePro provides an integrated solution for managing fields, estimates, irrigation, employees, vehicles and materials.
• CanePro consolidates all your data into a single database with controlled access for all users.
• CanePro affords improved insight and decision making with its easy-to-use graphical reporting interface.
• CanePro enables middle management to become accountable for decisions by allocating responsibilities to specific tasks.

Irrigation Scheduling

In arid and semi-arid climates irrigation is required to make up the deficit between crop water use and rainfall. Irrigation scheduling can be defined as the day-to-day management of irrigation, within the constraints of the system design.

CanePro uses a single dimension water balance approach to schedule future irrigation events. Rainfall and irrigation constitute the supply components of the balance whereas crop water use is the primary demand component.

Crop water use is calculated using a sugarcane-specific version of the Penman-Monteith equation and a thermal time-driven canopy development model. This crop water use estimate has been widely tested and has proven robust over a wide range of environments.

Transpiration and soil evaporation are computed separately to allow the irrigation system type to influence the rate of soil evaporation (e.g. sub-surface drip irrigation vs. overhead irrigation).

Fields are linked to user-defined rain gauges and weather stations. Fields can be split into sub-fields to allow for finer irrigation management units. Actual data (irrigation events and rainfall) are captured through CanePro's easy-to-use calendar interface.

CanePro's graphical interface allows the user to view a detailed water balance for each field and adjust the current water balance, effectively overriding the modeled balance.

CanePro schedules irrigation events for a week at a time using actual data captured to date and long term mean data for the projected period. Water requirements are rolled up to higher levels allowing the user to generate estate-wide water orders.

Numerous reports allow the user to evaluate the management of individual fields, or higher-level management units. CanePro's integrated GIS viewer allows the user to view current stress levels and prioritize fields with regard to current moisture status.