New Project Targets Sustainable Potato Farming
INNO-VEG is a new project that aims to support the development of reliable research methods that will, in turn, back the sustainable intensification of potato and field vegetable production. Being led by ADAS, an RSK company, in the UK, the initiative also has Inagro as partner in Belgium, Delphy in the Netherlands and ARVALIS – Institut du vegetal in France.
The first step of the project is to develop an overarching protocol for integrating crop sensing data into field research methodologies.
“We know that crop sensing data, for example, from drones or tractor-mounted, can show up differences in crop performance across a field. We want to see whether these techniques accurately assess final crop yields. If they do, they can be used instead of the labor-intensive and expensive standard field assessments,” said Lizzie Sagoo, project lead, and ADAS soil scientist.
“Treatments can be set up in line trials and statistically compared using yield maps from a combine harvester. The main barrier to adopting this approach is that yield mapping, although technically possible, is very rarely used for field vegetable crops. However, high-resolution spatial crop imagery can be easily collected during the growing season from all field vegetable crops. If this can be used as an indicator or a proxy for the final crop output, it can also enable field-scale research,” notes Daniel Kindred, ADAS’ head of Agronomics.
This project brings together a group of researchers with extensive experience of potato and field vegetable production systems, crop sensing techniques, spatial data analysis, and on-farm advice.
“Our ultimate aim is to provide farmers with a methodology for carrying out research on their own farms, where they can test new approaches such as varieties, establishment techniques or fertilizer management,” explains Sagoo.
In addition to the field experiments, the project team is setting up a cross-border (the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) network to facilitate innovation between the precision farming/sensor technology industry, research organizations and the potato and field vegetable crop sectors. The network is being developed by Delphy in the Netherlands and is due to launch later this year.