Farming Monthly National November 2017 | Page 13

| Arable
improvements have been made to SOYL’ s web-based precision crop service MySOYL, including performance maps that combine yield data over multiple seasons. This shows which parts of fields are performing or underperforming, or are inconsistent.
MySOYL also now allows users to see past weather data for their farm, helping farmers make smarter decisions in combination with crop production data layers.
A new variable rate nitrogen approach for spring barley uses layers of map data related to historic spring barley yields, soil surveys and satellite imagery to create areas of high and low yield potential. Areas with high yield potential have shown good yield increases from additional nitrogen without compromising quality.
Agrii’ s SoilQuest Precision Agronomy offers a service to evaluate, consult, and gather soil and nutrient data to advise on the specific needs of individual farm businesses.
Visitors to the SoilQuest stand can find out how the service provides a tailor-made precision agronomy package to help drive yields, target inputs and maximise efficiency, based on the creation of accurate field maps showing soil variation and nutrient status.
These are combined with
accumulated grower and agronomist farm knowledge to divide fields into separate management zones to put nutrients where they are needed.
SoilSmart, part of ACS Farm Image, is expanding its range of tailored sampling and analysis packages to include Precision Sampling and Smart Scanning.
Precision Sampling uses GPS technology to systematically sample a field, taking 16 cores / ha, or a specific number of samples / ha at the request of the farmer. This enables Farm Image Precision Maps that show field zones for pH, P, K and Mg.
Smart Scanner uses the latest in-field scanning equipment adding analysis of organic matter, soil texture( electrical conductivity) and topography via a Veris U3 soil scanner, which can to take 200 readings / ha and form on-the-go field maps via an on-board tablet.
Opti-cal provides cutting edge drone software and hardware solutions and can support growers entering the world of aerial survey work.
Its range of sensors include the Parrot Sequoia multispectral sensor, which analyses plants ' vitality by capturing the amount of light they absorb and reflect. The DJI Zenmuse XT sensor has thermal capabilities, that enable more efficient management of irrigation and water pooling.
Using Pix4D’ s cutting edge software, multispectral, RGB and thermal images can be converted into accurate reflectance and index maps, says the company.
The Landmark Team is demonstrating the latest version of Geofolia, due to be released in January. Landmark says this croprecording system has been proving itself on UK sites, since its LAMMA’ 17 launch.
It covers crop assurance, stock records, costings and mapping all in one place, avoiding the need for multiple spreadsheets, and also with a cloud and mobile app option to aid manager and operator alike.
30MHz uses wireless sensors and an intuitive analytics dashboard to help farmers monitor their greenhouses, fields, storage or processing facilities to drive productivity, increase profitability and cut costs. Developed in collaboration with Dutch farmers, the Smart Sensing Toolkit is scalable, flexible, durable and deploys out of the box in moments.
The company will be exhibiting a range of sensors that capture granular, real-time metrics including crop-level dewpoint, temperature humidity, pointed temperature and soil moisture for a variety of substrates.
Visitors heading for the Harper Adams stand will get a fascinating
insight into the ground-breaking Hands Free Hectare( HFHa), run by Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions. This project successfully planted, tended and harvested a crop using only autonomous vehicles and drones, a global first.
For newcomers and old hands alike, there is plenty to whet the appetite at Croptec for all things precision
The Iseki tractor which was used earlier in the project for the spraying, drilling and rolling, will be exhibited at CropTec. The tractor is small and light as the team believe that using smaller agricultural machines could improve soil and plant health. It also fits with the vision of small fleets of machines carrying out automated crop operations in the future.
The organisers say new talent will be needed in the industry to develop the technology. They hope this project has helped to inspire and show people the range of interesting and innovative jobs that are available now in agriculture.

Crops evolving ten millennia before experts thought

Ancient hunter-gatherers began to systemically affect the evolution of crops up to thirty thousand years ago – around ten millennia before experts previously thought – according to new research by the University of Warwick.

P rofessor Robin Allaby, in Warwick’ s School of Life Sciences, has discovered that human crop gathering was so extensive as long ago as the last Ice Age, that it started to have an effect on the evolution of rice, wheat and barley- triggering the process which turned these plants from wild to domesticated.

In Tell Qaramel, an area of modern day northern Syria, the research demonstrates evidence of einkorn being affected up to thirty thousand years ago, and rice has been shown to be affected more than thirteen thousand years ago in South, East and South-East Asia.
“ This study changes the nature of the debate about the origins of agriculture, showing that very long term natural processes seem to lead to domestication- putting us on a par with the natural world”
Furthermore, emmer wheat is proved to have been affected twenty-five thousand years ago in the Southern Levant – and barley in the same geographical region over twenty-one thousand years ago.
The researchers traced the timeline of crop evolution in these areas by analysing the evolving gene frequencies of archaeologically uncovered plant remains.
Wild plants contain a gene which enables them to spread or shatter their seeds widely. When a plant begins to be gathered on a large scale, human activity alters its evolution, changing this gene and causing the plant to retain its seeds instead of spreading them – thus adapting it to the human environment, and eventually agriculture.
Professor Allaby and his colleagues made calculations from archaeobotanical remains of the crops mentioned above that contained‘ non-shattering’ genes- the genes which caused them to retain their seeds – and found that human gathering had already started to alter their evolution millennia before previously accepted dates.
The study shows that crop plants adapted to domestication exponentially around eight thousand years ago, with the emergence of sickle farming technology, but also that selection changed over time. It pinpoints the origins of the selective pressures leading to crop domestication much earlier, and in geological eras considered inhospitable to farming.
Demonstrating that crops were being gathered to the extent of being pushed towards domestication up to thirty thousand years ago proves the existence of dense populations of people at this time. Professor Robin Allaby commented:“ This study changes the nature of the debate about the origins of agriculture, showing that very long term natural processes seem to lead to domestication- putting us on a par with the natural world, where we have species like ants that have domesticated fungi, for instance.”
The research,‘ Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication’, is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
www. farmingmonthly. co. uk November 2017 | Farming Monthly | 13