Schreurs & Sons and the Soil Wealth ICP team have partnered to explore the application of precision agriculture in celery, leek and baby leaf production systems. The demonstration site is located at Adam’s Cora Lynn farm, about 80km south-east of Melbourne.
We’re aiming to improve nutrition, irrigation and drainage management, and insect pest and beneficial monitoring as a basis for soil and crop health. To achieve this, we’ve used technology like EM38 mapping, gridded soil sampling, variable rate fertiliser spreading, remote monitoring insect pest and beneficial identification traps with cameras, as well as drones.
Adam, his agronomist, Stuart Grigg, and demo site coordinator from the Soil Wealth ICP team, Carl Larsen, have been busy planning and implementing the trial at the site over the past 12-months.
The activities have included:
- Gridded and pre-plant soil testing
- Development of a nutrition program and variable rate spreading
- Monitoring of drainage and crop health using drones
- Plant tissue testing
- Installation and use of remote monitoring insect traps
- Yield assessment.
The results and analysis from each of these activities are captured in the case study below.
