As anyone involved in agricultural trials knows, setting up and supervising a trial involves considerable effort. Not to mention the knowledge gained from such trials!

It is more than a little frustrating when something goes wrong in the final phase, e.g. due to a severe weather event. This is exactly what happened to us during an experiment in 2024.

…On 18.06.2024, a so-called supercell caused severe damage in the Saxon district of Meißen: Trees were uprooted and houses were partially covered.
Two parallel 380 kV power lines were also affected. A total of 17 pylons were knocked down by the violent storm…

Two high-voltage pylons stood at the edge of our test, and during the storm they fell into the trial areas.

Due to the toppled masts and the traffic during the securing measures, a proper harvest including yield mapping was no longer possible in some places. As there was only room for three repetitions on the plot, the trial could no longer be evaluated with statistical certainty.

Multispectral drone flights to the rescue

Rather coincidentally, we flew over the area with our Phantom P4 RTK and its multispectral camera the day before the storm event. It is known from the literature that the yield data can be derived from the NDRE index from a certain period before the harvest.

This correlation could also be proven here with the help of the yield data from the unaffected area of the trial and the drone data.

On this basis, a fictitious yield map without storm effects was calculated for the entire trial area, making the trial evaluable again!

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! We specialise in company-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

exagt@exagt.de or personally:

moritz.gassan@exagt.de
+49 (0) 170 365 2072, +49 (0) 34324 269739

arnim.grabo@exagt.de
+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

The value of correctly applied basal fertilization is and remains a part of crop production that should not be underestimated and plays a significant role in the harvest result. Deficits in the basal nutrient supply cannot be easily compensated for. As early as the 19th century, Justus von Liebig taught us that nutrients are not interchangeable; from our long agronomic experience, we have a fundamental skepticism about alternative approaches.

In practice, basal fertilization usually follows a relatively similar pattern. Soil samples are taken either by the farmers themselves or by the service provider in a 3-ha grid and then the mean values of the laboratory data are used to determine uniform fertilizer quantities for each field. However, potential is wasted here, especially in the case of GPS-supported measurements.

Exploit potential with little additional effort

If a farm receives GPS-supported soil samples in a 3-ha grid, it has excellent basic conditions for differentiated basic fertilization. Normally, no additional technology, software or training is required. EXAgT offers site-specific basal fertilization planning as a service for €1.50/ha per nutrient – an inexpensive introduction to this technology.

The advantages are clear: less waste of expensive fertilizer and a better supply of particularly undersupplied sections.

The software solutions used by EXAgT

In the area of differentiated basal fertilization, EXAgT can rely on two software solutions.

Firstly, a plugin developed by us and only used internally by us, which enables site-specific fertilization planning directly in QGIS.

On the other hand, the NAVIKAT application planner, a software solution for the “last step” on the way to the terminal, is available to everyone.

The software can be used in the following areas:

• Import of already created site-specific nutrient maps, e.g. in shape format and export in ISOBUS and John Deere terminal format.
• Use of management zone maps created by service providers. This involves dividing a field into fixed sub-areas that have homogeneous basic characteristics. These management zones are then treated differently for the various measures by assigning different quantities of inputs to the sub-areas. These can in turn be exported to the ISOBUS and John Deere terminal format.

The NAVIKAT application planner costs 950,- € without VAT and can be purchased in our webshop, a support and software maintenance contract is available via GIS GmbH.

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! We specialise in company-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

exagt@exagt.de or personally:

moritz.gassan@exagt.de
+49 (0) 170 365 2072, +49 (0) 34324 269739

arnim.grabo@exagt.de
+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

At Agritechnica 2023, AMAZONE, EXA Computing, geo-konzept, Hanse-Agro, the Kiel University of Applied Sciences, the start-up AgDoIT and we received the DLG-Agrifuture Concept Winner award.

Now it’s time to turn this concept into reality! We started with the automated trial planning module, for which our colleagues from AgDoIT programmed an initial version of the planning tool using the knowledge and experience of EXAgT.

Testing/further development and troubleshooting are carried out in parallel with the use of the software in real OFR trials.

Among other things, we are supervising a trial on underfoot fertilisation in maize with a project partner. In this case, for technical reasons, it cannot be set up using an application map, and the necessary randomisation of the test elements in each block makes it difficult to set up a reliable test system. In this case, lane planning is necessary, whereby each individual test element is planned in all repetitions using a full lane and implemented one after the other in the tractor terminal via RTK autopilot.

IFR at the Amatechnica

On 23.05.2024 our partner Amazone is organising its in-house exhibition Amatechnica. Our colleagues from AgDoIT will have the opportunity to present IFR at this event, and we will be there to support them! We will announce more details in the run-up to the trade fair.

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! We specialise in company-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

arnim.grabo@exagt.de
+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

andreas.schmidt@exagt.de
+49 (0) 173 352 8960, +49 (0) 34324 269739

Starting this year, we have been using our expertise not only to plan application maps for fertilisation, but also for growth regulators. As with N fertilisation, this is based on satellite data. As usual with EXAgT, we support you with our professional plus technical expertise from planning/data collection to reading into the terminal and application. The use of the method is also accompanied by large plot trials (OFR/PiG).

Project “Boniturschwarm” (assessment swarm)

The joint project “Boniturschwarm” of the TU Dresden, Chair of Agricultural Systems Technology and EXAgT GmbH will start on April 1, 2024 as part of the DMPL.

EXAgT has been using commercially available drones with multispectral cameras for several years for field assessments in monitoring/analysing field trials.

The time-critical use of drones in agricultural crop protection practice is currently hampered by the low productivity of drone use due to the technically limited flight times and the effort involved in photogrammetric analysis.

The use of larger, more powerful and automated drone solutions requires the use of very expensive technology, expensive insurance, highly qualified drone pilots and changes in legislation; “casual use” by a crop production specialist is no longer affordable.

One solution would be the simultaneous use of several drones, either in parallel for faster work completion or hierarchically (e.g. one drone provides the overview at a higher altitude to detect “defect areas”, the other(s) do the ” detailed work” at a lower altitude). Photogrammetric (pre-)processing of the images in the field would greatly reduce the overall processing time and thus enable site-specific crop protection applications on short notice.

The productive use of a drone swarm for field assessment by a ” standard” agronomist would promote the use of remote sensing technology for the effective use and saving of plant pesticides.

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! We specialise in company-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

arnim.grabo@exagt.de
+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

andreas.schmidt@exagt.de
+49 (0) 173 352 8960, +49 (0) 34324 269739

While browsing the LinkedIn platform, I found this interesting picture of Nathan Faleide, an AgTech specialist from the USA, see
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-faleide-036b43b5/

This illustrates my current experience in the creation of management zone maps (“potential maps”) from multi-year satellite data very well. This is a task that is carried out automatically by various providers. But what is the quality of the maps generated? Every year is different, fields are split and merged, irrigation lines are laid, there are processing and application errors, cloud shadows and much more. In my experience, there are areas where only ONE date has provided a usable image for zoning since the start of the Sentinel-2 flights! For such areas, an ” automated” system provides the mixed entity at the bottom left of the image, and in contrast to this, you can’t even guess which data is responsible for this in the generated map!

An AI also relies on data and learnt knowledge; if these are incorrect, the result will be the same. In computer science, programming an access function for a database is labour-intensive for humans, but a trifle for an AI. Assessing the quality of basic data and arriving at a comprehensible result with the ” correct” agronomic knowledge is much more complex. And then there’s the “battle” over which is the ” correct” agronomic knowledge 😉 .

In practice Satellite vs. plant sensor

The creation of fertiliser maps for our service “N fertilisation according to the measurement of N uptake by satellite in autumn” for winter oilseed rape is in the final phase.

Many of our customers have a YARA N sensor, but do not perform an autumn scan. The reasons for this are the limited operating times of “old” passive sensors in autumn, peak workloads, cost savings for an extra trip or the poor accessibility of the fields. This means, for example, that only a few fields could be scanned, but planning is required for the entire rapeseed area.

An opportunity for us to compare the satellite and plant sensor in practice when recording the parameter N uptake in oilseed rape!

The comparison shows, on the one hand, a comparable level of the measured N uptake values, but also the greater level of detail of the map from satellite data.

The differences lie in the type of measurement. The Sentinel-2 satellite works similarly to a digital camera with a defined resolution such as the 10x10m spectral channels used here.

With the YARA sensor, an average value is calculated from the measurements of each of the two sensor heads (2x 3m measuring width per head). For each track, this one value is used as the default value for the entire working width (36 metres in this case).

Modern centrifugal spreaders have the ability to spread different quantities at least to the left and right, while pneumatic spreaders and sprayers have many individually controllable sections. This means that a higher resolution of the application maps can also be realised within the track.

We create application maps from these values using the tried and tested Rapool algorithm; agricon has its own calculation methods.

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! We specialise in company-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

arnim.grabo@exagt.de
+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

andreas.schmidt@exagt.de
+49 (0) 173 352 8960, +49 (0) 34324 269739

Since 2017, we have been successfully offering our “N fertilisation according to the measurement of N uptake by satellite in autumn” service for winter oilseed rape and winter wheat/barley/rye. This is based on cloud-free Sentinel-2 satellite measurement data before dormancy and reference measurements of N uptake in the crop.

How was the availability of such data this year? For our customers in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, there was good quality data on 23 October 2023; this was also the case for Eastern Saxony on 30 October 2023.

This was more difficult in other locations, such as west of Dresden/Erzgebirge. We had carried out our reference measurements on the ground here in late autumn; we were only able to use satellite data from 17.12.2023. Since the cold period at the end of November/beginning of December 2023 had hardly any influence on the crops of oilseed rape/winter cereals, even due to the snow cover, this was possible without any problems!

The search for cloud-free images of our customers’ fields in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia was also very time-consuming this year, and we are proud that we were able to find them for all areas, sometimes through painstaking detective work!

The N-absorption maps and calculation tables have been finalised this week and will be sent to our customers from Monday!

Get on board now!

We now have cloud-free satellite data throughout eastern Germany at the end of 2023 and can now also create N uptake maps for winter oilseed rape and winter cereals and use them as a basis for fertilisation in spring 2024, a spreading map can be created at short notice!

If time is short, fertilise a constant N1a application (also for sulphur supply, see below), the next application can then be differentiated with an application map.

If there were problems with the sensor recordings in autumn, difficulties with the generation of spread maps, if you need personal advice from agronomy to application technology, please contact us!

Ask us, we look forward to your tasks! Our speciality is farm-specific solutions, we value you and your challenges =;-).

Our contact details are:

arnim.grabo@exagt.de

+49 (0) 176 72588814, +49 (0) 34324 269737

andreas.schmidt@exagt.de

+49 (0) 173 352 8960, +49 (0) 34324 269739