Almost a decade ago South Australian grain grower Mark Branson was interviewed for GRDC's
Groundcover TV.
Back in the 90's we were doing 3 to 3 and a half tonne a hectare; early two thousands
we were doing 4 tonne a hectare and last year we hit a jackpot and got a 6.6 tonne average
wheat yield.
What contributed to that increasing yield trend was Mark's use of Precision agriculture
and crop sensor technology, together with the adoption of Nitrogen Rich strips.
A crop fertiliser management practice Mark brought home from the USA after a Nuffield
study-tour in 2005.
And this idea of the Nitrogen Rich strip with the GreenSeeker is able to confirm whether
I need to apply Nitrogen or not, that's been a big saving on this farm.
N-Rich strips are a spreader-width early application of Nitrogen applied at a luxury rate, which
is typically twice the rate a grain grower would apply.
It's a reference strip, the rest of the paddock can be compared too.
The recommendations I'm getting from the paddock in behind me is that I'm going to be needing
30 kilograms of Urea in one part of the paddock and 140 kilogram of Urea in another part of
the paddock.
It's one progressive farmer's approach to what the grains industry sees as a much broader
opportunity.
Identifying ways time poor farmers can use automated systems and tools such as precision
agriculture and sensor technology, to improve profitability.
So the Grains Research and Development Corporation invested in the Future Farms project.
Now in its second phase, where 4 farm-scale core sites and 9 satellite trials are providing
data sets for computer modelling, CSIRO and its research partners are working to enhance
the algorithms used in sensor technology to make them more applicable to Australian farming
systems.
But the problem with those sensors is that the algorithms that accompany those that allow
you to generate a decision first and foremost they haven't been developed under Australian
conditions but the other thing is that they assume that the only thing you need in order
to make the nitrogen decision is the set of numbers that get spat out of the sensor.
This research is advancing the thinking that a Nitrogen fertiliser decision is a univariate
decision based on the sensor values alone.
The idea being pursed by the Future Farm team is a better prediction of the likelihood of
a crop responding to additional nitrogen will result from combining a number of resources
with the crop sensor's data.
Resources such as soil moisture sensors, farm scale strip trials and publicly available
weather data.
And also collecting plant and soil samples to calibrate the sensors.
This combined data will better reflect the multivariate nature of a Nitrogen fertiliser
decision.
And allow the team to be more certain that a fertiliser application will deliver the
desired response.
To help assess that likelihood of responsiveness Mark Branson's paddock was given N-Rich strips
and zero-N plots for reference and an array of sensors are being used to scan the entire
paddock.
Now on the Kubota that we'll probably see going up and down in the background we've
got a number of sensors which sense the so called Normalised Difference Vegetation Index
the NDVI and variations on that theme, there are a number of different indices that we
can sense.
Precision Ag researcher Andre Coloaco now works for CSIRO, managing data collection
and sensor calibration at both the South Australian and Western Australian trial sites.
These sensors are measuring reflectance so basically reflected light from the crop.
So how do we turn what these sensors are measuring into something that is useful for the farmer
to recommend Nitrogen?
By comparing the readings that we are doing with the sensors in both strips, the zero
and the N-Rich can potentially predict the final response of the crop in terms of yield
and protein concentration and so on.
Other valuable sources of data include Mark Branson's paddock histories and the part played
by different soils types.
The role of this other variable, the soil information that we're collecting soil moisture
and soil physical characteristics it will adjust the sensor algorithm to that environment.
So that's why we are hoping it will work across different environments and in different seasons
and in different climates because we are collecting all this extra information.
And with that information the farmer can then hopefully make as close as possible to an
optimum decision in terms of his or her decision to invest in Nitrogen and get a reasonable
expectation of the expected return from that investment in Nitrogen.
Before these outcomes can be applied on-farm the science needs to deliver the analytical
tools and extend its scope beyond Nitrogen application.
And while there are a couple of years for the project to run Rob Bramley believes the
innovators could be applying the research sooner.
A farmer like Mark Branson who's been playing around with this technology himself for sometime
he could potentially adopt what we're doing quite quickly particularly as he's got his
own soil moisture sensor along the fence here assuming the project is successful there'll
certainly need to be a little bit of development and extension beyond the research that we're
doing at the moment before things can get adopted.
What the Future Farm project is trying to do is exactly what I've been trying to do
for the last 10 years.
Its also introduced some new ideas to me like the zero strip and I can see a lot of future
in that because that gives an indication of whether the crop needs Nitrogen earlier than
what a N-Rich strip does.
For grain growers Nitrogen fertiliser is one of the greatest input costs they face and
as Mark Branson told GCTV back in 2011 his use of precision ag and sensor technology
allowed him to make a big savings on Nitrogen expenditure.
Future farm could potentially deliver a similar result for a lot more grain growers.