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ii Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is widely grown in the United States with 5.7 million ha grown nationally and 1.2 million ha grown in the humid southeastern states in 2005. From 1969 to 2003, agricultural irrigated farmland acreage and total water applied increased by over 40 % and 11 % respectively to include a total of 55.3 million acres in 2002. Combined with recent and more frequent drought periods and legal water conflicts between states, there has been an increased interest in more effective southeastern water management, thus making the need to develop improved irrigation scheduling methods and enhanced water use efficiency of cotton cultivars. Several irrigation scheduling methods (soil moisture monitoring, pan evaporation, and climate based) tested at Clemson and elsewhere have shown that sensor-based irrigation significantly increased cotton yields and provided a monetary savings compared to other methods. There is however limited information on capacitance based soil moisture analysis techniques in the southeastern coastal plain soils and also limite