New Grants Boost Flow of Water Research at Fresno State

FRESNO, CA – Faculty and student water researchers at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) will soon benefit from new grants providing $150,000 in funding to study innovative irrigation techniques, including artificial intelligence, low-flow filtration, and aerial systems imagery.

A total of four grants were awarded by the Irrigation Innovation Consortium, a collaborative research effort to accelerate the development and adoption of water and energy-efficient irrigation technologies and practices through public-private partnerships. Each grant includes partnerships with one or more of the start-up ventures from the Water, Energy and Technology (WET) Center at Fresno State. The projects will involve over 20 Fresno State students.

“The partnership with the WET Center was critical in helping identify industry projects of high importance,” says Dr. David Zoldoske, an executive committee member for the consortium and a project specialist for the Center for Irrigation Technology. “It is a natural partnership between Fresno State researchers and start-up companies to advance new technologies.”

The research grants include:
Artificial intelligence model for estimating crop water demand.
Faculty member Fayzul Pasha will lead work with the Center for Irrigation Technology and WET Center technology companies WiseConn, Dynamax, Irrometer and others. The partnership is designed to develop, validate, and test an artificial intelligence (AI) model using data from a fully instrumented olive orchard located at the University Agricultural Laboratory at Fresno State. A model will be developed to estimate crop water demand with higher accuracy.

“This project will develop an AI model to improve agricultural water and energy use efficiency using field, plant and weather data,” Pasha says.

Development of a low-pressure and low-flow water and energy efficient media filtration system. 
Led by senior researcher Dr. Kaomine Vang at the Center for Irrigation Technology and in partnership with Perigo LLC, a WET Center member, the project will research a new filtration technology that is more energy efficient and will require less water for back flushing.

Satellite and unmanned aerial systems imagery use to implement timely irrigation strategies. 
Led by researchers at Colorado State University and collaborating with Fresno State researchers Dr. Florence Cassel and Dr. Dave Goorahoo at the Center for Irrigation Technology, this project will assess the accuracy of using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and satellites to determine a crop’s actual water use and soil water deficit.

This study will be conducted at two research facilities in Colorado, one in Weslaco, TX; one in Garden City, KS; and at commercial farms near Fresno. Remote sensing imagery will be collected daily from research sites to determine crop evapotranspiration and soil water deficits.

“We expect to develop novel guidelines to program the timing of irrigation using very high-resolution remote sensing data derived from satellite and UAS images,” Goorahoo says. “This, potentially, will have a great impact in water, soil and energy conservation in irrigated areas of the world.”

For more information on these new projects, contact the Center for Irrigation Technology at 559/278-2066.

Featured

  • Springfield Breaks Ground on $53.7M Pipkin Middle School Rebuild

    Construction is underway on a new, state-of-the-art Pipkin Middle School in Springfield, Mo., a major step in Springfield Public Schools’ (SPS) long-term facility improvement plan, according to local news. The $53.7-million project officially broke ground in early June, following years of planning and community input aimed at modernizing aging infrastructure and addressing student capacity concerns.

  • ProTeam Launches GoFit 6 HEPA Backpack Vacuum

    Technology leader Emerson recently introduced the new ProTeam GoFit 6 HEPA backpack vacuum, according to a news release. The vacuum was designed to capture 99.97% of particulates down to 0.3 microns—including atmospheric hazards like lead dust, mold spores, and other particulates—through an advanced filtration system.

  • California High School Starts Construction on New CTE Building

    Analy High School, part of the West Sonoma County Union High School District (WSCUHSD) in Sebastopol, Calif., recently broke ground on a new Career Technical Education (CTE) Building, according to a news release. The 15,000-square-foot facility will offer specialized facilities for students in engineering, welding, culinary arts, agricultural sciences, and design thinking.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Introduces Claude for Education

    Anthropic has launched a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

Digital Edition