LandWISE 2015 Presenter Geoff Bates
Environmental pollution results, both from nitrate leaching and greenhouse gas emissions that arise from the high urea content of urine patches. This problem is possibly the biggest single threat to dairying in New Zealand. Pastoral Robotics’s solution addresses this threat whilst increasing the bottom line through increased grass growth without requiring large capital investment. This is in contrast to other methods of nitrate leaching reduction, all of which either reduce profitability and/or involve significant capital investment.
Pastoral Robotics’s solution allows the customer to increase profitability in the following ways:
- Directly through increased grass growth
- Indirectly through allowing the continuation of their current farming practice without additional costs
- Indirectly through opening options to increase milk solids production within regional council-imposed nitrate-leaching or fertiliser N use limits.
The system
After the last cow leaves the paddock Spikey® is towed over the freshly grazed land detecting and treating the urine patches with ORUN®. ORUN® is sprayed only onto recent urine patches, meaning typically only 5% of the pasture has to be sprayed, a huge saving in chemicals.
Spikey® detects changes in the electrical properties of the soil caused by the presence of urine.
ORUN® is a combination of a commonly-used urease inhibitor NBPT (not DCD), and the widely-used growth-promotant gibberellic acid variant (GA3). ORUN® greatly increases the already large amount of extra dry matter grown in the vicinity of the urine patch, and with it recovery of urine-nitrogen. The NBPT increases the lateral spread of urea out from the urine patch; the GA increases the vigour of the growth. This increase in growth covers all costs of using Spikey®.
Increased pasture growth automatically means reduced environmental losses of N – independent testing of ORUN® by Massey University indicated a reduction in nitrate leaching from urine patches of up to 50% and N20 emissions by 27-37%.
The first commercial version of the Spikey® urine detector and simultaneous treatment with ORUN® spray have been designed to be towed behind an ATV or other farm vehicle.
Mini-ME®, an electric robotic tow vehicle, is under development to eventually take over the towing role, leaving the farmer free to concentrate on his stock.
Presentation authors: Geoff Bates and Bert Quin, Pastoral Robotics Limited