A powerful new software package designed to simplify agronomic decision making from drilling through to harvest will be launched by digital farming solutions specialist xarvio in the UK this spring.
“Field Manager applies local weather, satellite and other third-party data to model growth, disease and pest development specific to crop and variety,” says Luke Pollard, xarvio Implementation Lead.
“This, combined with farmer experience and know-how, delivers efficient and sustainable crop management to make the most of every field zone.”
Growers can view their field status at any time, obtain field-specific cultivation recommendations and download a range of field zone-specific application maps for a range of inputs including fertiliser and crop protection products.
Field Manager consists of three parts. Field Monitor tracks and predicts crop development using biomass maps generated by current and historical satellite data. It produces field zone maps for nutrition, crop protection, growth regulators and soil.
Spray Timer recommends the optimum timing for crop protection applications. It provides an overview of crop growth stage and pest and disease risk and alerts users when there is a change to risk status. On-farm observations can be used to optimise forecasts and recommendations.
Zone Spray provides field-zone specific dosage recommendations, ensuring operators apply the right amount of product where it is needed at the right time. It currently features automatic generation of variable rate maps for T2, and is compatible with all standard terminals, using maps loaded onto a USB flash drive. Users of MyJohnDeere and Agrirouter can send these maps to their terminal wirelessly.
Accurate in-field data
For the past three years, US decision agriculture specialist, Arable Labs, has been working with xarvio on in-field measurements that power the Field Manager platform.
Last month (4 December 2019) the two companies agreed to fully integrate Arable’s in-field measurements generated by its innovative Mark 2 weather device into xarvio’s crop models and recommendations.
The collaboration builds on a successful pilot programme in 2018-2019 when hundreds of Mark devices, which accurately measure precipitation using sound, were deployed across Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Great Britain.
They collected field-level measurements including leaf wetness, precipitation, temperature, and vegetative growth, significantly increasing the accuracy and precision of spray window recommendations.
“The integration of Arable’s unique dataset with xarvio Field Manager is very good news as it will further help optimise crop production decisions,” says Louis Wells, Solutions and Services Manager.
“BASF’s digital platform is built on decades of experience in crop production and protection, with Arable’s hyper-local crop and weather data it enables more precise in-field assessments to be made.”
The Arable Mark 2 is now available online and will be integrated into xarvio Field Manager for the 2020 growing season.
