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Tracking soil moisture to estimate crop yields with new ‘live’ web link
Australia
August 19, 2013
‘Live’ soil moisture and weather station information from a range of Yield Prophet® sites across the southern grainbelt is now available on-line.
The data is updated hourly from soil water capacitance probes that are tracking growing season soil moisture levels every 10cm down the profile in the root zone on key soil types that have not yet been well characterised for Yield Prophet® in WA.
The probes have been installed at seven Yield Prophet® sites as an initiative of the GRDC’s Regional Cropping Solutions Networks (RCSN) groups in the Albany and Esperance port zones.
An extra four Yield Prophet® sites have been allocated to existing soil moisture probes installed via other projects throughout the Albany and Esperance port zones with funding from the RCSNs and project partners.
The aim is to improve the robustness of the Yield Prophet® model for estimating crop yields and water use efficiency under local conditions.
Yield Prophet® is the web interface for the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM), which was developed with GRDC funding and provides on-line, real-time, paddock-specific information about the crop during the growing season.
There are about 120 Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA) Yield Prophet® sites set up throughout the WA wheatbelt this year in partnership with farm consultants and grower groups.
The southern RCSN groups funded the soil water probes and weather stations to provide additional data for grain growers to use in conjunction with Yield Prophet® analyses.
The probes and Yield Prophet® sites have been installed and managed by Precision Agronomics Australia and the project is being managed by the Ravensthorpe Agricultural Initiatives Network (RAIN).
Information from the probes (uploaded every hour to an ADCON Telemetry website) and Yield Prophet® data will be highly valuable as growers assess the need for, and amount of, top-up nutrients and assess potential crop yields.
Soil water probe and weather station data from the 11 Yield Prophet® sites can be accessed for free by all grain growers via the South East Premium Wheat Growers Association (SEPWA) website: http://www.sepwa.org.au/index.php/2011-11-15-05-40-21/soil-moisture-probes
RAIN will also soon have the information available on its website: www.rain.org.au
Growers wanting to track the progress of crops at any of the Yield Prophet® sites in their area – and/or sites with similar soil types to their own - can also check reports from and attend field days run by local grower groups during the growing season.
Further information is available from:
Yield Prophet site reports are also available from:
Consultancy company Anasazi Agronomy, managed six Kwinana East RCSN-funded Yield Prophet® sites on sandy duplex soils in the Kwinana East port zone in 2012.
Across these sites, predicted yield results from Yield Prophet® were 11 to 34.5 per cent below final actual yields, but results will be calibrated from repeat trials in 2013 and 2014.
The majority of producers who received Yield Prophet® reports from these sites in 2012 made cost-saving decisions to reduce or cut-out post-emergent nitrogen applications.
It was estimated this saved them 15-25kg/ha of nitrogen, or about $14-22/ha (including the cost of application).
Further south, results from 11 Albany port zone RCSN and DAFWA-funded Yield Prophet® sites in 2012 showed Yield Prophet® predictions were close to final yields at five sites.
Yield estimates from rainfall data alone, using the Potential Yield Calculator (PYCAL), were within 80 per cent accuracy at nine sites and this is another valuable tool that growers can use to support fertiliser decision making this season.
More solutions from: GRDC (Grains Research & Development Corporation)
Website: http://www.grdc.com.au Published: August 19, 2013 |
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