Subproject 11 (SP11)

Project participants:

Agri Con GmbH

SP-Titel:

Research of methods for operationally ON-FARM-Experiments in Precision Farming (PF)

Shorttitel of the SP:

On Farm Research (OFR)

Aims of the SP:

Development of a Manual / Handbook for realizing OFR to evaluate

Precision Farming Technologies

Development of Basics for producing experimentally data

Position of the SP in the association project:

Projectfield 4

PF is the specifically and correctly reaction of heterogeneity in plants, Soil and growth.

Characteristics of the heterogeneity are described by valuations, analysis and more and more on-and offline-sensors. The so collected datas have to be agronomically evaluated into recommendations for site specific applications.

The Advantages of the PF-Technologies are the higher efficiency of working funds (increased yields or less working funds) and a better ecological compatibility.

The statistically security of this added values is the content of OFR.

Figur1 Online Sensor at work

The wellknown Methods of traditionally field trial methods try to exclude the heterogeneity of fields. The aim is to reduce the variance of other influences. That’s why f.e. this trials are small strips, blocks or patterns. They are natural useable for basic research. But they are not useable for precision farming investigations. Precision farming basically needs differences, heterogeneities and variances. That means precision farming trials have to be placed on big fields with high heterogeneity to find out the “small” advantages of PF-Implementation. The precision farming trials are considering the main important influence factor (often soil) by clustering and include it into the evaluations.

Figur 2- example of an application - and yieldmap

The mass datas from plants, soil and growth, application and yield are managed by the pc and statistically prepared for proving the advandage of PF-technologies.

The aim is to develope a handbook that gives routines for planning, making and evaluation for precision farming technologies.

05.August 2005