Category Archives: AgTech

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, Drainage, Precision Agriculture

Will Bignell

Will “DroneAg” Bignell is a farmer and agricultural scientist who has worked across a number of disciplines ranging from a PhD in enhancing omega-3 in sheep meat to flying drones commercially.

Will is a 7th generation farmer from Bothwell in Tasmania and the family farm is well known for pioneering and innovating a number of new and emerging Australian industries. He runs the farm with his parents and produce wool, poppies, lamb, venison and number of boutique specialty root vegetables. 240Ha of the farm is under irrigation and 150ha is under an intensive cropping rotation.

In his LandWISE 2018 presentation Will presented his own farm case study of precision drainage including the use of UAVs to collect terrain data, the tools used to design and implement drainage plans and the results following a heavy rainfall event.

DroneAg is the combination of  Will and Kyle Gardner who combine a unique mix of skills that places DroneAg in a very strong position to push the boundaries of just what drones can do for farm businesses.

Will’s attendance at LandWISE 2018 was supported by AGMARDT

 

AgTech, Conference, Drainage, LandWISE People, Orcharding, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Soil

Tim Herman

Tim Herman is Technical Manager – Crop Production at New Zealand Apples & Pears Inc. which he joined in 2013.

His role includes managing the R&D portfolio for the industry and ensuring the outcomes from it are integrated into commercial crop management programmes.

Tim has a strong track record as a technical researcher and advisor in crown research and in industry. LandWISE first worked with Tim to understand slug migration patterns in no-till and strip-till cropping paddocks.

In his LandWISE 2018 presentation, Tim will introduce  “Smart tools to improve orchard drainage“.  This is a new MPI Sustainable Farming Fund project, in which LandWISE is partnering with NZAPI to investigate high precision drainage in existing orchards.

Severe wheel ruts are common especially in wetter seasons. The immediate problem of tractor access for bin shifting is compounded by poor conditions for pickers and the less obvious impact of fruit rots increase. In more severe cases the ruts greatly increase picking costs as the use of mobile hydraulic picking ladders is made difficult, unsafe or impossible. In some cases, harvest costs are reported to have doubled. 

Despite numerous attempts to rectify puddles and mud, the problem remains. The project will adapt and pilot use of precision technologies to survey, design and implement surface drainage plans that minimise ponding risk and reduce these negative impacts.

These will be supported by guidelines for wheel track management to provide a secure base for harvest traffic. This will become even more critical as the industry  automation with picking platforms and robotic harvesters.

 

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, Data Analytics, LandWISE People, Nutrients, Research

Bruce Searle

Leave a comment

Bruce Searle is well known to LandWISE regulars having been on the Board for many years and an active contributor at many conferences and other events.

A crop physiologist in the Integrated Crop Production Systems group, Bruce leads the Plant & Food team researching onion crop development and modelling. His group is responsible for recording the life histories of 2,000 individual onion plants!

These data have informed development of an on-line tool to assess crop performance and help growers understand if crop development (and yield) is limited by established population, plant growth or both.

The collaboration with LandWISE has combined detailed plot scale work with whole paddock surveys to help Onions New Zealand growers understand the drivers of crop variability.

A small trial within this project looked at fertiliser rate and timing options when canopies are variable. Can we reduce rates in small canopy areas and still get the potential yield?

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, Irrigation, LandWISE People, MicroFarm, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Sensing, Soil, Water

Dan Bloomer

Leave a comment

Dan Bloomer is the Manager of LandWISE having been instrumental in our formation and evolution since 1999. He and partner Phillipa established the Centre for Land and Water in Hastings and host the LandWISE MicroFarm.

The 2018 conference sees the wrapping up of three years of Onions NZ research in partnership with Plant & Food, much of the activity being undertaken at the MicroFarm. LandWISE has captured numerous paddock scale images of the onions crops using satellites, UAVs, sensors and smartphones. This has given insights into which tools have strengths for what purposes at what crop growth stages.

Using algorithms proposed by Plant & Food, LandWISE developed the on-line tool SmartFarm which allows smartphone captured crop development data to identify different management action zones and give guidance to the degree of variability.

Dan is particularly interested in soil and water issues, how we can continue to benefit from farming while maintaining or enhancing profitability and environmental health.

Dan has developed many resources for irrigators to check their systems. He spent many years on the Board of Irrigation New Zealand, developed Codes of Practice for Performance Assessment and has run many training programmes.

In recent years his attention has been drawn to precision drainage technologies, and he uses OptiSurface to understand and quantify ponding and erosion risk in paddocks and to design solutions for surface drainage. 

Dan actively scouts people,  technologies and problems, identifying opportunities to bring them together to effect change on farm. As such, he has initiated LandWISE’s research and extension programmes including some new initiatives to be launched at LandWISE 2018.

Dan represents LandWISE on the Precision Agriculture Association of New Zealand Executive Committee and is a frequent presenter at conferences and seminars.

When not working for LandWISE, Dan is an independent consultant at Page Bloomer Associates.

 

Agronomy, AgTech, Automation, Conference, Data Analytics, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture, Research, Robotics, Sensing, viticulture

Armin Werner

Leave a comment

Armin Werner has a background in crop production sciences and as director of an Institute on Land Use Systems at ZALF in Germany worked on enabling new technologies for sustainable development.

Since 2013 Armin has headed the Precision Agriculture Science group at Lincoln Agritech (LAL), a subsidiary of Lincoln University in New Zealand. This covers Precision Farming (arable crops, pastures), Precision Livestock Farming, Precision Horticulture, Precision Spraying as well as Agricultural (Outdoor) Robotics.

Armin’s work has led him to create strong linkages and collaboration projects between various scientific disciplines and sectors including academic institutions, researchers and farmers.

Current projects  include trans-disciplinary and technology-based research in NZ for various high-value crops; e.g. on fruitlet counting and sizing for apple crop load management. He manages also the Robotic Spearhead project of the National Science Challenge ‘Science for Technological Innovations’ that develops new knowledge for small, highly adaptable and flexible robots.

At LandWISE 2018 Armin will update delegates on the “Precision Grape Yield Analyser”, a research project on vineyard sensing and yield forecasting that Lincoln Agritech is undertaking.

Armin says,

“The ‘Precision Grape Yield Analyser’ is an ongoing interdisciplinary MBIE-project, supported by NZ Wine Growers and several vineyards. Grapevine yields can vary between seasons by a factor of 2 and New Zealand grape growers are keen to avoid unplanned high yields. To assess the expected yield on the block level very early in the season we develop sensing tools and computer models. AI-based sensor fusion combines data from optical and microwave ‘scanners’ and feed the results into a continuously learning, predictive computer model.

Listen to Armin and discuss his work with him and others at LandWISE 2018 in Havelock North on 23-24 May.

AgTech, Conference, Drainage, LandWISE People, Nutrients, Soil, Water

Aldrin Rivas

Leave a comment

Aldrin Rivas is a Catchment Hydrologist at Lincoln Agritech. He has over ten years of professional experience in the fields of water and environmental science, engineering, and management; and has worked for private and government entities.

Aldrin has experience in denitrification in natural and engineered systems and will tell delegates at LandWISE 2018 about a Lincoln Agritech, ESR and Aqualinc project investigating woodchip bioreactors to remove nitrate from drainage water. Some say this is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Others say it’s catching the horse and putting it somewhere safe!

With a mixed background in engineering and science, Aldrin is involved in a variety of Lincoln Agritech projects including the Ground Water Mitigations project and the Transfer Pathways Programme.

His interests include:
• Groundwater
• Denitrification in the vadose and saturated zones
• Vulnerability assessment of freshwater resources
• Integrated catchment development and management
• Water supply systems and management
• Environmental and hydrological modelling

You can hear and discuss this with Aldrin at LandWISE 2018 in Havelock North on 23-24 May.

AgTech, Conference, Data Analytics, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture

Shane Wood

A LandWISE 2018 invited speaker, Shane Wood’s topic is “Information from grapevine to desk for timely decision making”. He will explain how apps and cloud systems can replace bits of paper and get information where it is needed in the most timely fashion.

Shane has always been passionate about harnessing the power of data to produce powerful information for better business insights.  For over 25 years his company, Information Power, has delivered software solutions for Healthcare, Education and Emergency Management sectors.

Information Power launched Vinea five years ago to provide growers in the Viticulture and Horticulture industry with software that dramatically simplifies the collection and management of data associated with resources (labour, equipment and consumables), crop measurements (qualitative and quantitative) and environment. In the last year processed over 3 million transactions through the Vinea Cloud saving growers time, eliminating paper and delivering new insights.

Aside from being a statistician and data scientist, Shane is also passionate about Argentine Tango and is preparing for LandWISE 2018 by spending two weeks dancing in Buenos Aires.

 

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, LandWISE People, Plant Health, Precision Agriculture, Research, Sensing

Sarah Pethybridge

Assistant Prof Sarah Pethybridge‘s career spans from Tasmania, through Plant & Food Research in New Zealand to Cornell University in New York. She has a focus on vegetable disease management, and a goal to provide reliable information to vegetable growers and industry stakeholders to encourage adoption of durable management strategies and tactics.

A LandWISE keynote presenter, she described leading techniques and technologies to help optimise control tools and reduce the frequency of false positive or negative decisions.

Sarah told us, “We are now in the second year of our project with the center for imaging science at Rochester Institute of Technology looking at hyperspectral data to detect flowering in snap bean to optimize timing of fungicides, and using canopy density as a risk factor. We are also expanding this work into beets to detect and differentiate abiotic and biotic stress. In the digital agriculture arena, we recently released three apps on disease detection, quantification, and spatial analysis of epidemics using pixelated data.”

Sarah’s travel to New Zealand is supported by Cornell University,  McCain Foods, Heinz-Wattie and AGMARDT

 

              

Many thanks to AGMARDT, sponsors of our international presenters 

 

AgTech, Automation, Conference, Data Analytics, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture, Robotics, Sensing

Nicholas Woon and Matthew Warner

Nick Woon and Matt Warner co-founded Acuris Systems in 2016.

Acuris Systems is developing orchard management systems that provide robotics, data capture and analytics for kiwifruit growers, to detect disease, forecast yield and increase grower knowledge of their orchard and its variability.

Nick and Matt are presenting at LandWISE 2018 on the topic, “A robotic platform for canopy monitoring“.

Nick says, “At the moment we are focusing on accurate fruit counting using photogrammetry and neural networks. Utilising the recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we aim to analyse crop, detect disease and forecast yield. Beyond just analysis we want to develop a solution that will robotically automate the kiwifruit growing processes, including the culling of flowers, spraying of pesticide and picking of the fruit itself.”

The Acuris robot is a smaller, three wheeled machine designed to carry cameras and other sensors around kiwifruit orchards.

For something a bit different, check out K9 the walking quadruped, one of Matt’s earlier prototype robots. 

You can meet Nick and Matt at LandWISE 2018: Technologies for Timely Actions, 23-24 May 2018 in Havelock North

AgTech, Automation, Conference, Data Analytics, LandWISE People, Sensing

Mark Bart

Metris Principal, Mark Bart, is an atmospheric scientist with deep interest in air quality and weather forecasting. With long experience in atmospheric measurement including cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry, meteorology and atmospheric dynamics he knows how important sensors, sensor maintenance and data quality are if you want to make good decisions.

At LandWISE 2018, Mark and University of Auckland colleague Kevin Wang will talk about maintaining data quality in field sensor networks – those much talked about hundreds, thousands and many thousands of gadgets that are going to be sending massive amounts of data from our farms and orchards through the Internet of Things (IoT).

Sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) offer timely decision making around disease modelling, spray-application, irrigation control and frost-fighting.

Mark says, “If we are going to make decisions on the basis of data, an important question is: ‘How good are the data?’ This question need to be answered in a reliable and timely manner so that the correct decisions around crop management and sensor servicing can be made, and that the chance of bad decisions are less likely to occur.  Our experience shows that as the cost of the sensors comes down, the cost of managing the sensor network and keeping it calibrated goes up.”

Come to listen and discuss sensors and quality of data with him at LandWISE 2018: Technologies for Timely Actions.