All that exists then is both cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible bond, which unites things most distant and most different. I hold it impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, or to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail (B. Pascal, 1669).

Welcome to the AgroHydrological Sensing and Modeling Laboratory in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (DAFE). This lab harmonises the three pillars of knowledge with the scope of transmitting/transferring them to the Irrigation Industry and Higher Education sectors.

Our actions are always motivated to address critical societal needs that can be covered through technological advances. Moreover, they also find application in the mitigation of natural adverse phenomena (Drought) and the converging social crises concerning the use of water resources of the territory. Integrating third mission activities with the agronomic-based research sectors contemplates optimal irrigation management in an integrated way, which includes the management of water stress, rather than avoiding it, with the most modern water-saving strategies.

All the used/suggested technologies/protocols to schedule irrigation are pertinent to the feed-forward and feed-back control irrigation protocols. In the first case, the crop water requirements and its aliquot to be supplied are simulated by agrohydrological models, whereas with a feed-back control of the irrigation, the farmer maintains the soil-crop water status within a certain pre-defined range and acquires an awareness of the status through sensors systems installed at local and/or distributed scale.

Finally, the monitored and/or simulated forcings are implemented in a cybernetic platform, which the farmer can easily use for crop water stress management.

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