Glossary

Plantings (crops) that are currently in the ground.

Active and past plantings.

The volume of water applied during an irrigation event in units of inches or hours.

Amount of soil moisture available to the crop. The amount is estimated from water holding capacity of the soil, maximum soil moisture tension that does not cause yield loss, and the rooting depth of the crop.

A graph showing the change in the percentage of ground covered by the crop canopy during the season. The canopy curve is used for estimating the crop coefficient (Kc), needed to calculate crop evapotranspiration during the season.

The California Irrigation Management Information System, operated by the California department of water resources, is a network of more than 150 weatherstations that provide daily and hourly microclimatic data for most agricultural production areas of California.  The CIMIS weatherstations provide estimates of reference evapotranspiration.  The CIMIS program also provides a satellite based estimates of reference evapotranspiration at a spatial scale of 2 km; Both options are available in CropManage.

A crop coefficient (Kc) is used to adjust reference ET to crop ET using the equation ETc = Kc x ETo where ETc is evapotranspiration of the crop and ETo is the evapotranspiration of a reference crop such as a well-watered grass area or pasture that has consistent full canopy cover.

A category of crop species such as tomato, onion, almond, alfalfa,etc.

Date of the end of a crop.  Note that this date would correspond with the harvest date of crops harvested once or the last date of harvest for crops harvested multiple times.  For multi-year perennial crops such as tree, vine, and forage crops, the end of crop date may be when the crop goes dormant.

A sub category of a crop commodity, such as romaine lettuce, winter broccoli, bunch spinach etc.

The combined water loss through evaporation from the soil surface and transpiration from plant leaves. Evapotranspiration is usually estimated using weather stations in units of mm per day or inches per day. ETc is an abbreviation for crop evapotranspiration, and ETo is an abbreviation for reference crop evapotranspiration.

Any activity recorded for a planting such as a fertilizer application, irrigation, soil or tissue sample, or cutting (in the case of forage crops)

Click on the “star” icon in the top left side of the planting card to place the planting in the favorite category list.

Sprinkler irrigation during the germination or transplant establishment phase of the crop. The application uniformity of the sprinklers during the germination phase of the crop is set lower than for the normal sprinkler irrigation method due to the need to have ample soil moisture in all areas of the field.

Date that the leaves first emerge on tree, vine, and caneberry crops.

Crops that have been harvested or finished for the season.

A crop, orchard, or vineyard within a planting area.

The area where the crop is located such as a field, orchard, lot, block, etc.

Summary of upcoming and past events for a planting and other information such as planting name, planting area, and start and end date of crop are displayed on a rectangular planting card.  The card also provides links to planting settings and other information and summary tables and lists.

Maximum volume of soil moisture available for crop uptake without causing water stress. Soil type, effective rooting depth, and maximum soil moisture tension value corresponding to crop water stress, will affect PAW.

A group of fields or planting areas under the same manager or farming operation.

Users designated by the ranch owner who have access to the ranch or the farm data.

The user who created the ranch on CropManage or was designated to manage the ranch settings.

After logging into CropManage a list of ranches or farms are displayed in rectangular tiles.   The Ranch name, number of active plantings, and ranch owner are summarized on the ranch tiles.

The effective depth of the root zone of the crop. This is the depth that the crop takes up that 90% of water and nutrients from the soil. Rooting depth is used for estimating available soil moisture and available soil mineral nitrogen.

Density of soil in units of grams of oven dry soil per cubic centimeter of soil volume. Bulk density of the soil is used in the estimation of soil mineral nitrogen and available soil moisture. Bulk density of soil will usually vary between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cc

Field method to measure nitrate-N concentration of soil using nitrate-sensitive paper strips and calcium chloride extractant.

Minimum concentration of soil mineral nitrogen needed to maximize crop yield.

Soil properties from National Resource Conservation Service Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) accessed using UC Davis SoilWeb.

Maximum soil moisture tension at which the crop will experience moisture stress. CropManage estimates an irrigation interval that maintains the soil tension less than the target threshold.

 The source of irrigation water for a ranch or farm.  This could be a well for irrigating with groundwater or a surface water source such as a canal, river, or reservoir.

An event that is scheduled for a ranch member to complete, such as sampling soil or plant tissue, or irrigating or fertilizing a crop.

Biometeorological instruments for monitoring the microclimate above a crop, such as air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, and rainfall.  These data can be used to estimate evapotranspiration for a reference crop such as well watered grass.  CropManage requires the user to select at least one weather station to associate with each ranch.

Percentage of soil surface wetted by irrigation system (estimate includes non-planted areas such as the furrows in row crops or the alleys between tree rows).

Date of the first irrigation of seeded and transplanted vegetable crops.

Soil moisture tension after irrigation or rain event followed by 12 hours of drainage.