This week at Lindcove REC the John Deere Company installed two John Deere Field Connect™ soil moisture systems in two of our mandarin research plots.  The systems were donated to Dr. Mikeal Roose of UC Riverside (Dept. of Botany and Plant Science) for use in his citrus rootstock trials that are based both here and at the UC Riverside campus. 

The soil moisture probe takes a reading every 30 minutes and transmits the data through either cellular or satellite communication to a dedicated website every two hours where the information can be securely reviewed from the internet.  The soil moisture probe installed here has sensors at depths of 4, 8, 12, 20, and 40 inches. The system allows us to see the depth of an irrigation water application, understand where the active root zone is, and allows us to capture observations in the field through notes on the graphs.  The photo below shows Technical Service Manager Craig Hornung of the Visalia John Deere office installing one of the sensors in between two Nules clementine trees.  The next photo shows a sample screenshot of the data from the system installed at the UC Riverside rootstock field trial.