After months of planning our OnionsNZ, Plant and Food, Sustainable Farming Fund onion variability project, things are underway at the MicroFarm!
Gerry Steenkamer planted the crop on 2nd August. Rhinestone seed was donated by Vigour Seeds and treated for us by Seed and Field Services. We are very grateful for their support.
An initial residual herbicide application of Dacthal and Stomp was applied. We had a lot of wireweed last year and are keen to get on top of that.
Plant and Food Research staff have established plots for detailed monitoring. They are doing many very detailed individual plant measurements at plot scale. LandWISE is coordinating a number of sensing surveys of the whole crop using a range of technologies.
More details for the research programme and measurements are available on the MicroFarm website.
Plant and Food researchers have developed growth models for a range of crops. This work will help refine their onion growth model, a key to understanding the development and variability in crops. The detailed plot measurements will also be compared with the whole paddock sensor measurements to corroborate and calibrate them.
The first paddock scale surveys have been completed. These give some base information and understanding of the site and it’s variability. Maps as pdfs are available on the MicroFarm website.
One of the first “layers” we can look at is Google Earth imagery – free info on the web! Have a look at your place: use the time slider to view a series of aerial and satellite images captured over recent and not so recent years.
We have posted some of “our place” images and some interpretation here>.
Page Bloomer Associates completed an RTK-GPS survey using Trimble equipment from GPS Control Systems. The data were used to create surface ponding and runoff risk maps.
AgriOptics completed a Dual-EM survey in early July. This gave shallow and deep soil information maps. The dry winter means soil had not reached field capacity when the survey was made, so we are a little cautious when interpreting the results. But we risked not getting a survey at all, and by planting in August it had still not rained. With beds formed and crop planted and emerging, we have no opportunity now to repeat the survey.
AltusUAS has prepared NDVI maps of cover crops from UAV mounted sensors. They will be making repeated measurements as the crop develops. AltusUAS is now using MicaSense technology for efficient multispectral image collection.
ASL Software has provided their Cover Map canopy cover measurement tool fitted with high accuracy GPS. We can now use that technology to measure relative plant development and ensure our readings (our mapped data) are located in the correct beds!