Water Productivity, Efficiency and Sustainability Project

Water Productivity, Efficiency and Sustainability Project

The Water Productivity, Efficiency and Sustainability Project (WPESP) will develop and implement programs to monitor and benchmark efficient crop water use for industry. 

The project will assist growers to enhance water efficiency through new irrigation monitoring technology and management systems. It will provide Top End growers with the resources to efficiently use water and reduce the pressure on our water resources, especially in the Katherine and Darwin aquafers.

Key features of the project will be:

  • Evaluate the efficiency of current practices
  • Use baseline data to deliver and quantify greater water use efficiency, productivity and profitability
  • Improve water use efficiency and sustainability practices
  • Develop capacity in precision agricultural techniques and practices
  • Utilization of soil moisture monitoring
  • Trials of state of the art irrigation technology
  • Implementation of scheduling programs

Project Outcomes

  • Increased public awareness of the importance of irrigation in food production
  • Increased community understanding of the water efficiency measures implemented by growers
  • Tailored farm specific irrigation programming
  • Adoption of monitoring technology
  • Engagement by wider industry and irrigation suppliers
  • Horticultural farms to adopt industry best practice for irrigation scheduling and use benchmarking to drive continuous improvement of water use efficiency.
  • Agricultural producers adopt best practice with local industry support.

Project partners/funding bodies

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