Soil moisture sensor selection. An extensive range of soil moisture sensors/probes have already been commercialized and are available to use in avocado and other orchards. They determine the real-time soil water potential (tension) or volumetric water content and are dominated by a small number of technologies including granular matrix or gypsum block sensors, tensiometers, time domain reflectometry (TDR) sensors, and Frequency Domain Reflectometry (FDR) or capacitance sensors (Table 1 and Fig. 2). Some commonly used soil moisture sensors can be combined with various telemetry devices to access the data through cloud-based data storage applications. Data is automatically uploaded by radio or cell phone communications to cloud-based computer servers and is accessible through apps on smartphones and tablets. These communication advancements greatly improve the convenience of accessing data and can be configured to provide timely alerts when trees require irrigation.
Read more about their use in avocado and other orchard tree cropsl, as well as other tasty topics at:
https://ceventura.ucanr.edu/newsletters/Topics_in_Subtropics102527.pdf
