Technological advances changing tattie growing

Drones: Satellite imagery captures fields in perfect detail, providing a plethora of data

Advances in technology over the next five years will make a significant difference to the way potato growers manage their crops.

Jim Wilson, managing director of Brechin-based Soilessentials, told a Grampian Growers conference in Montrose that the pace of change was speeding up and developments make it possible to amass huge amounts of data.

“The challenge now is to find a simple way of combining all the information,” he said.

Mr Wilson said the technology used in drones was advancing fast and the cost was coming down as complexity was engineered out.

Satellite imagery was also improving thanks to massive investment by organisations such as Nasa as well as by private companies.

“Satellites not much bigger than a soft drinks can are being literally dropped out of the doors on manned spacecraft and there are now around 170 of them in orbit,” Mr Wilson said.

“It means that every single square metre of the Earth is being captured every day with high-resolution images in colour. It is now possible to subscribe any field anywhere in the world into this service.

“Compared to the previous cost of tens of thousands of pounds, it is now possible to receive 20 images per year of the field for a cost of around £4 per hectare.”

The data received could be combined with multiple images taken from UAVS (unmanned aerial vehicles) as they followed pre-programmed flights across the field. These could be “zoomed-in” to identify individual leaves.

“All of this information could be used to identify and explain variability across a field, but if combined with fieldspecific weather information it could also be used to predict disease risk particularly from late blight.

A collaborative venture between Soilessentials, Cambridge University and James Hutton Institute has developed a blight sensor which can detect the spores in the air.

Mr Wilson added that it was also possible to combine UAV and satellite imagery to predict the total yield of a potato crop and the size distribution within it.