Investigating variability in potatoes

June 20, 2016 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

Final potato crop yield is a sum of its parts; each individual plant contributes to it. Should some of these individuals perform below potential, overall yield will be reduced accordingly. Yield variation within a crop is caused by biotic and abiotic factors, which could range from the wholesale effect of soil compaction restricting root growth across the entire field or be an outbreak of patches of disease causing the early death of individual stems or plants.

Nationally, potato yields average 55- 60 t/ha, which are not economically sustaining for many growers, and well below the 80-90 t/ha potential yields predicted by crop models. This was confirmed in a Canterbury survey of 11 process crops in the 2012-13 season where the crops had different histories, management and cultivars. All crops had a similar overall rate of yield reduction, largely caused by soil borne disease and soil physical constraints.

The survey showed that individual groups of healthy plants in a crop did achieve up to 90 t/ha (Fig. 1). However some groups of plants yielded as little as 30 t/ha, due to Spongospora and Rhizoctonia infection, soil compaction and/or inferior seed quality.

Figure 1 Final yields from groups of individual plants that were: both healthy and growing in compaction-free soils (yellow bar); had soil compaction together with Spongospora (root galls); had severe Rhizoctonia stem canker; had both diseases and were growing in compacted soils

Last year, an intensive study of three Canterbury crops showed that some areas of the crops reached potential and that others were limited by soil borne disease infection and water supply.

A field experiment at Lincoln is currently investigating how bed shape, subsoiling and irrigation regime are affecting crop production, and future work will look at how improvements to seed tuber production could reduce yield variability.

Drainage, Irrigation, Precision Agriculture, Soil

Precision Agriculture in Tasmania

June 20, 2016 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

Where are we getting value?

Rob Tole, Farmer
Greenvale Pastoral, Tasmania

Rob and his wife, Eliza, are now the fourth generation farming Greenvale, which was traditionally, a 100% dryland, prime lamb operation. It is now a diversified farming business with an extensive cropping program and a small breeding flock of crossbred ewes which are run alongside a lamb trading operation.

The farm has a long term average rainfall of 680mm and is now 60% covered with fixed pivot irrigators, reducing the risks of dry seasons. Soil types range from very heavy black canola running up to lighter sandy loams.

Over recent years, extensive development work has been put into practice. Technology has been implemented into the farming system to gain efficiencies in production and labour, such as livestock handling equipment, variable rate irrigation, Fieldnet, RTK guidance NDVI images underground drainage and grid soil mapping.

The introduction of PA has been implemented over a decade but in recent years the adoption of VRI and NDVI has taken this to a new level. It dramatically altered the way we view our crop management and has opened up many opportunities to increase production but at the same time reduce inputs

The operation now has a well-balanced irrigation system complementing the cropping and lamb production, allowing turn off lambs all year round.

Precision Agriculture

Variable rate technology – a collective approach

June 20, 2016 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

Variable rate technology in vegetables – a collective approach

Ben Moore

DJM Farming, Fassifern Valley, Kalbar, Queensland

Ben Moore is part of a small family mixed cropping operation (vegetables, grains and fodder) situated in the Fassifern Valley, approximately 90km south west of Brisbane, Queensland.

Ben is a member of a small local vegetable grower group that has been working towards the implementation of precision technologies, in particular variable rate technology for the past 2 years. This group has been involved in a larger project exploring the value that precision agriculture technologies provide to vegetable systems.

The group has been able to purchase a range of technologies that are shared by group members. This includes crop biomass sensors, yield monitors and variable rate equipment. Through the application of these technologies DJM Farming has gained more detailed understanding of the variability within their farming operation.

The range of precision technologies they now have access to has provided them with multiple data layers to assess spatial variability, develop strategies to manage it and obtain cost benefit data to assess the value of any intervention.

The presentation provided some background on the members of the vegetable grower group as well as some detail about DJM Farming’s journey to implement precision and variable rate technologies.

Agronomy, AgTech

Precision in Queensland Vegetables

June 20, 2016 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

Lessons in frustration, improvisation and unexpected outcomes

Ian Layden
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Queensland

It’s widely promoted that precision agriculture (PA) has the potential to offer producers a myriad of exciting opportunities for improving crop performance and ideally profits. However, the reality seems to suggest that in order to unlock any significant benefits a lot of work and importantly knowledge generation will be required.

Arguably, progressing PA in vegetable systems will require producers, consultants and R&D providers to accept technology and systems that aren’t fit-for-purpose and the numerous obstacles that exist in terms of equipment compatibility, data processing and management, service and support and whether the return-on-investment (ROI) outweighs the costs.

Despite the numerous reasons not to invest and adopt PA practices, vegetable producers and agronomists have achieved a number of essential adoption milestones, though typically this hasn’t been easy or straightforward.

Recent work in Queensland suggests that the adoption of advanced PA technologies and practices (e.g. crop sensing, yield monitoring, soil mapping and variable rate applications) is occurring, though often the process and outcomes are either unintended or unexpected. This work also indicates that diverse relationships and delivery methodologies may be required if industry wide adoption of PA is to occur.

This presentation used examples from the process of optimisation and validation of PA in vegetable systems in Queensland including producer and consultant survey data. The presentation also used examples from outside agriculture to illustrate that through experiencing difficulties and failures actually may improve the adoption process. This has implications for producers, consultants, investors, program managers and policy developers.

AgTech, Precision Agriculture, Research, Sensing

Turning precision data into knowledge for vegetable systems

June 17, 2016 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

JulieOHalloran1 Julie O’Halloran

Senior Development Horticulturist, Horticulture and Forestry Science Agri-Science Queensland, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries

Queensland vegetable growers and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries have been collaborating to adapt precision agriculture technologies into vegetable systems for the last two years. This work has focused on 3 key areas: assessing spatial variability, implementing variable rate technologies and yield monitoring. Significant spatial variability has been successfully identified in Queensland vegetable systems using a range of crop sensing technologies (e.g Satellite, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and tractor mounted Greenseeker®).

Ground truthing the underlying causal factors of this variability has proven critical to enable informed decision making to manage block uniformity. These ground truthing activities have focused on EM38 soil mapping to understand any inherent soil variability, mapping of cut and fill areas, crop sensing imagery, strategic soil sampling programs and monitoring pest, diseases, irrigation and drainage.

While within block biomass and yield variability can be inferred from crop sensing data, it is ideal to measure yield itself. The measurement of yield variability is currently being trialed in carrot, sweet potato and potato production in Queensland using retrofitted load-cell based, geo-referenced yield monitors. Primarily, this provides growers with a quantitative data set of the spatial and temporal nature of yield variances and the cost of lost yield potential.

Additionally, it allows growers to cost benefit analyses of potential management interventions to improve under performing areas and make decisions as to whether these are likely to be cost effective. This presentation will highlight the undertake outcomes from a range of variable rate applications and how multiple data layers can be used to manage crops to address spatial variability.

AgTech, Precision Agriculture

John Deere Conference Special

May 21, 2016 Dan Bloomer Leave a comment

As a proud sponsor of LandWISE, John Deere has an exclusive Activation offer for members and 2016 conference attendees. To qualify, simply register for your unique voucher code at JohnDeere.co.nz/Activation before going to your nearest John Deere dealer to purchase. Be quick, this offer is only available until 30 June 2016.

JohnDeereSpecialOffer

*Offer is available for LandWISE members and conference attendees only. Valid for purchases between 25 May and 30 June 2016. View the full Terms & Conditions.

Download Offer Brochure

AgTech, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture, Research

Sprout Accelerator

May 17, 2016 Dan Bloomer Leave a comment

Sprout is a new agritech accelerator programme delivered by The BCC, Building Clever Companies in Palmerston North.

Entrepreneur-in-Residence Stu Bradbury is well known to the LandWISE community through his role starting and growing Where’s My Cows, Precision Irrigation and its Variable Rate Irrigation technology and more recently setting up AgriOptics in the North Island..

Stu will be introducing the Sprout Accelerator programme at LandWISE 2016 and giving a brief review of its first achievements.

Accompanying Stu are representatives from two successful Sprout programme participants, AgriTrack and Bee’z Thingz.

Dunedin entrepreneurs Andrew Humphries and Tom Rivett created AgriTrack to help large scale crop farmers with the multitude of logistical challenges during harvest time, particularly those associated with vehicle management. Their solution enables live tracking of vehicles and is already being used in more than 30 farms in Western Australia.

Dunedin entrepreneurs Andrew Humphries and Tom Rivett created AgriTrack (C) Sprout

Mangere Bridge duo Julian McCurdy and Peter Bennett set up Beez Thingz using technology to develop a platform for hive management so a network of kept bees could be accessed by everyone in the industry.

Beez Thingz founders Julian McCurdy and Peter Bennett Image (C) Sprout

Just three more exciting offerings at LandWISE 2016!

Agronomy, Controlled Traffic Systems, Drainage, Irrigation, Plant Health, Research, Sensing, Soil, Water

Investigating variability in potato crops

May 17, 2016 Dan Bloomer Leave a comment

LandWISE 2016 Conference presenter Sarah Sinton is a well experienced member of a Plant and Food Research group studying potatoes.

In the 2012-13 growing season the Plant and Food researchers surveyed commercial potato crops in Canterbury and confirmed grower concerns that a “yield plateau” of approximately 60 t/ha was common. At this level, potato growing is becoming uneconomic.

Plant and Food Research computer-based modelling shows that yields of 90 t/ha (paid yield) are theoretically possible in the surveyed paddocks in most years. This shows a “yield gap” of about 30 t/ha.

The most important factors found to be reducing yield were soil compaction, the soil-borne diseases Rhizoctonia stem canker and Spongospora root galls.

DSC_4288sm — Tuber health, disease management, soil compaction and irrigation all have ability to reduce yields

Using CORE funding, Sarah and colleagues have been running a number of related trials, comparing field performance with modeled potential growth rates. They’ve used DNA to assess soil pathogens, applied a range of treatments and measured disease incidence and yields. They have also looked at the role of seed quality in potato emergence, variability and yield.

But it is not all about diseases. Soil compaction, structure and related issues such as aeration, drainage and water-holding show up as crop limiting factors. Also implicated are irrigation management and weeds.

Potatoes NZ reports that the use of guidance technology and variable rate application based on soil testing is being undertaken but there is limited crop based management of inputs. There may be opportunity to manipulate some inputs.

In paddock variability can be relatively easily identified using remote sensing equipment (both NDVI and Infrared) but there are three major problems with potatoes which are:

Remote sensing can identify differences in a paddock but these need to be ground truthed to determine what the reason for the difference is – e.g. canopy disease etc.
Often by the time a difference is apparent on a crop sensor map, even when it is ground truthed, growers cannot implement a management decision that will change the crop performance.
Yield maps are generally used as the baseline reference for Precision Agriculture and this is difficult and expensive to implement for potatoes.

Sarah is presenting some of her group’s work at LandWISE 2016. Look for “Investigating variability in potatoes”.

Precision Agriculture

Trans-Tasman Rivalry at LandWISE 2016

May 11, 2016 Dan Bloomer Leave a comment

QuizPanel

Disputes between horticultural interests on either side of the Tasman will be settled once and for all until the next time at the LandWISE Conference Dinner.

Cross “7 Days” with a sub-tropical vegetable and what do you get?

An intense debate between main and dessert courses will pit teams from east and west of Lord Howe Island. Three of the finest growers and agronomists from each camp will line up before adjudicator Ian Layden.

A true Queensland patriot and government agent, Ian is totally unbiased and will ensure a fair fight. “I’ve done this a lot”, he says. “It’s a great deal of fun!” “You won’t see any overarm tactics from our side”, he adds.

Make up of the Kiwi team is a closely guarded secret and will not be announced until immediately before the contest. Rumours indicate this is because the New Zealand camp leader has been away a lot and may not have contacted eligible contestants. This has been denied.

With record numbers registering for LandWISE 2016, there will be plenty of witnesses available to assert their side was the true winner on the night.

Delegates can also look forward to a full array of excellent presenters, a great chance to chat with colleagues and make new contacts and watch an airshow displaying UAVs from 1 kg to 64 kg.

We thank our loyal sponsors for their support for LandWISE 2016

More information here

Agronomy, AgTech, Automation, Controlled Traffic Systems, MicroFarm, Planting, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Sensing

Trans-Tasman Grower Day

May 4, 2016 Dan Bloomer Leave a comment

Looking for answers - LandWISE 2015 — Looking for answers – LandWISE 2015

What’s the Trans-Tasman Day about?

Given there are two dozen top Australian growers, agronomists and researchers joining us for our conference, arranging more time to discuss issues of interest was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The programme for the day is less structured than a normal conference day. The morning is inside discussion, the afternoon getting out and about. But it does follow two days of conference, so we’ll be well primed.

We will spend time discussing some key crops – onions and potatoes included – and importantly technologies we can use to better understand and manage them.

We aim to identify areas of common interest and possible collaboration. What topics are relevant in both countries? What joint research opportunities are there? Where to from here?

After lunch we travel to a local farm, True Earth Organics, where Scott and Vicki Lawson and staff grow and pack a range of field, vegetable and berry crops. From there we go to a local major vegetable processing factory to view the next stage in the value chain.

TrueEarthHeader

Where are we getting value?

Variable rate technology in vegetables – a collective approach

Lessons in frustration, improvisation and unexpected outcomes

Promoting sustainable production