Tools like Veris and SoilOptix allow you to obtain data such as pH, organic matter and soil texture, which are loaded into FieldView for precise herbicide management.
The evolution of remote sensors and the platforms that control them are generating increasingly important allies for digital agriculture. This is demonstrated by the work being carried out by an expert from Bayer, in Córdoba, to face the challenge of weeds.
Weeds are, precisely, one of the biggest problems that the Argentine producer faces today and the specialist Gonzalo Blanc, from his base in Río Cuarto, Córdoba, focused on it thanks to the interaction of remote sensors, new digital agriculture platforms and FieldView.
Blanc is generating prescriptions for the application of residual herbicides based on the physical and chemical properties of the soils, such as pH, texture or organic matter, which it obtains through different tools.
“From the monitoring and setting that tools such as Veris or SoilOptix do, for example, with their intensified samplings, a base grid for interpolation of data can be made and added as a base layer of information within FieldView, to advance with more precision in the herbicide prescription”, he explains.
Blanc comments that SoilOptix works through gamma rays to read the physical and chemical properties of the soil, such as pH, organic matter and texture.
“So, by placing that database layer in the Fieldview agricultural software, since they can be incorporated manually, I can then draw specific areas within the field in which I am interested in varying the residual herbicide dose,” he
details.
The expert recalls that SoilOptix is an agricultural technology tool of Canadian origin, which is complemented by FieldView, and that in Argentina there are already three companies that provide this service to producers who wish it.
On the other hand, Blanc adds that another option, in the same vein, is the Veris harrow, which allows the producer to perform a hyperintensive sampling of the lot through electroconductivity, which returns several key parameters
that can be loaded on the platform and that They allow to determine, for example, the presence of rough and the depth to which it is. Indirectly, it also allows knowing other parameters, such as texture or pH.
With all of these data, much tighter residual herbicide prescriptions can be made for long fallows of corn and soybeans.
But the technician points out that not all residuals act in the same way since they vary according to pH or organic matter. And there lies the great contribution of having that information in FieldView, to decide the appropriate
management in precision agriculture.
“There are some herbicides that degrade much faster, according to the pH of the soils, and others according to the levels of organic matter. Therefore, in a batch with a different organic matter content, the recommended dose per label can be varied to make the application more efficient”, he says.
That variation of the application, precisely, is done directly by the FieldView agricultural software, generating a prescription that is then loaded into the sprayer to do the necessary work. As Blanc says, it is another example showing that agricultural technology helps reduce herbicide application, supporting the expansion of
more precise and sustainable agriculture.
“Without a doubt we are going towards a more detailed agronomy, driven by the advancement of technology and the use of digital platforms. It is a new productive paradigm”, concludes Blanc.
In this case, with the FieldView precision agriculture platform and other linked tools, different possibilities for weed management open up. And it is not a little, in an Argentine agriculture in which this issue constitutes, every year, a
major problem.
View the original article on Climate Fieldview (Spanish)