Most growers have now been accumulating data for 20 years or longer — and many have resolved to keep that data in the hopes of finding value from the gigabytes and terabytes of accumulated information in the form of increased on-farm efficiencies, cost reductions and improved yields.

But how should growers and agronomists interpret this data? That’s the goal of a venture by Chatham, Ont. agronomist Aaron Breimer.

With his new business, Moose-Ag, he aims to use his decade of experience working with growers in southwestern Ontario to help them interpret data and turn it into useful management directives.

Breimer recently provided answers to a few questions growers may have on the use and interpretation of data.

Q: If we accept that growers aren’t using their data to greatest advantage, what factors hold them back?

A: Time is always at a premium for farmers, be it trying to get the crop planted, chores completed, business planning or spending time with family. There are a lot of software platforms that farmers have access to that enable them to visualize and create insights from their data.

Generally, they’re called GIS or geographical information systems software and they allow GPS-generated data to be organized and overlaid. But as powerful as they are, in order to fully utilize them, users need to be interacting with them on a regular basis.

For some, they might only want to interact with their data two or three times a year, and it might take several hours to remember the nuances of each. When time’s at a premium, those hours aren’t always an option.

The end result is the more powerful aspects of these platforms are not engaged with, or the software isn’t utilized after the first or second time.

Q: What about data interpretation and expertise?

A: The current business model for agricultural data is a software platform, built and sold to end-users who pay to use it but are actually doing the work themselves.

Yes, there are some of the higher-end data interpretation tools in platforms that can be challenging, but there are lots of industry experts that can provide explanations.

In my opinion, those experts are also running into time constraints, like agronomists who are tasked with evaluating in-field challenges or supporting the agriculture industry in crop input sales. It’s like tax software: there are great accounting platforms on the market and for individuals who want to, they allow people to manage their finances and tax reporting responsibilities effectively.

But there are also plenty of bookkeepers and accountants utilizing those platforms for clients who choose not to do the work themselves.

Q: What about biases in data interpretation?

A: Every human being has biases, some of which are obvious, some less so, like a preferred brand of farm equipment. The same is true with data. Researchers have formal training in how to set up and conduct studies to minimize or eliminate biases (in the field).

But on-farm data interpretation can be more challenging. When a grower invests in seed or a fungicide, they want the data to prove them right.

In my opinion, biases cannot be eliminated in farm-scale data. We can try to minimize them and acknowledge that some still exist.

Q: How does the uniqueness of an individual farm operation affect data interpretation?

A: That’s one of the coolest things about agriculture; that uniqueness that each farm operation contains, and the story that created it. It isn’t just biases that might suggest Variety A does better than Variety B for Farmer Smith while the exact opposite is true with Farmer Jones.

It could be soil type, soil fertility based on the previous rotation or the presence of livestock; it might be drainage, or patience on the part of either grower heading to the field at planting.

When a farmer walks onto a research site or sees data results and says, “these are interesting but this isn’t my farm,” we need to listen to that statement, because it’s true. If a farmer is saying that because they want to continue to farm based on their existing biases, that’s OK. It’s been working for them.

However, if a farmer wants to work towards continual improvement of their operation, they might be asking for support on how to evaluate their existing system and how to adjust those based on their unique operation. But evaluating those tweaks has to make sense and be easy to implement.

This is a huge reason why I’m a proponent that every field can be a research site. It doesn’t have to include 50 trials with every field requiring cleaning out the planter each time.

But I do believe that if each field is treated as a unique data set and we overlay a systems approach, it might be incredible what we can learn or gain from that individual farm.

One of the things that makes the Yield Enhancement Network project [YEN, an international network of groups connecting agricultural organizations, extension specialists, academics, agronomists, and farmers with a focus on yield improvement] successful is that farmers are getting the support to do these research initiatives, and we need more of those.

The post How to deal with the farm data deluge appeared first on Grainews.

But those are two-dimensional applications, and although those can go awry and complicate a grower’s plans, adding a third dimension — in the air — can result in something catastrophic.

That was Dr. Jason Deveau’s overriding message during his Southwest Agricultural Conference presentation in January at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus. The application technology specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) pulled no punches on the potential use of drones in spray applications.

For starters, spraying pesticides via an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone is illegal — and for very valid reasons, Deveau explains.

The flight and speed dynamics at which planes and helicopters fly cause the spray to “lay out” in a level or horizontal flow, whereas drones are constantly forcing air downward.

Walking attendees through several videos, Deveau briefly explained how sprays behave behind a helicopter or a plane, noting no crop disturbance below.

“The only thing that affects spray deposition behind a plane or a helicopter is gravity, the wind that blows it around and any forward momentum from the vehicle itself,” he says. “Drones, however, always have a downward component no matter how fast they fly. They are always in hover or transitional flight, which means they’re always blowing down.”

The number of rotors, droplet size and distribution — and where the droplet is released relative to the rotor — complicates the application. Fine droplet spray is susceptible to the wind effect of the rotor. If released close to the centre of the drone, droplets react like a tornado, and droplets released at the wing tip will be thrown all over the place, Deveau says.

Part of that dynamic comes from drone design, with rotors spinning at variable rates and relative speeds not fixed to one another.

“The reason a drone can stay so eerily still is because all of those rotors spin at different speeds depending on what the wind is doing,” Deveau says.

“Which means the effect of that wind, that down-wash on a droplet, changes from moment to moment, and it’s not just one of them, it could be four or two or eight (rotors).”

Next on his list of concerns was the plumbing of a drone. Drone size limits its chemical volume carrying capability to a fraction of a ground applicator, resulting in lower volumes at very concentrated rates.

Ask any agrochemical expert, he says, and they’ll say chemical formulations are precise and complicated with the intent of dilution to a specific degree.

“That changes how the product moves and how it dissolves and ultimately, it changes how it reacts when it hits a plant surface,” Deveau adds. “If you hyper-concentrate but put in low volume, what’s going to happen? We don’t know. Sometimes it’s good; sometimes you need a toothbrush.”

If understanding droplet size and the effect of the number of rotors on spray distribution, volumes and concentrations isn’t complex enough, the drone weight — empty or full — also affects spray patterns.

Deveau provided video examples of fields with drone-applied sprays — using dyed water only — and the results were evident when compared to ground or even hand applications (typical in greenhouses).

In one slide, the drone’s spray pattern drifted beyond an established buffer zone; perhaps the altitude was a little high, it wasn’t at optimal flight speed, or spraying at the correct pressure.

Where is it leading?

According to Deveau, the road ahead for drone technology use in chemical spray applications is long and arduous and requires more research to determine how to lower existing risks when using the devices.

Many of the efficiencies and nuances of drone technology are unknown and hard to establish. Thus far, research determined drone spray coverage is roughly five per cent versus conventional systems which are up to 10 per cent.

There are also concerns about operator exposure, drift potential, and the 10 per cent of product remaining in the air. It’s not just Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) involved but Transport Canada, as well, because many operators want to fly heavy drones in populated places, which requires an advanced pilot license, Deveau explains.

“If you’re talking about spreading fertilizer or cover crops, drones are really fantastic,” he says. “If you’re going to sneak out and spray pesticide — and I won’t lie, people are doing it — don’t do it. It’s illegal, and it’s not going to work for you. At least not consistently, and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong.”

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University of Illinois research on the source of N — that is, how much a corn plant gets from fertilizer and how much from soil — has initiated a considerable amount of debate since its results were released last May.

Kelsey Griesheim, now an assistant professor at North Dakota State University, completed her graduate studies at Illinois and determined about 67 per cent of N taken up by corn plants is from naturally occurring sources in the soil, not from fertilizer.

Five months later, Emerson Nafziger, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, wrote a follow-up piece acknowledging Griesheim’s work and the controversy her findings sparked.

The primary research was conducted in 2017 and 2018 at three sites in east-central Illinois. Ammonia was enhanced with a natural heavy isotope known as 15N, making it traceable in the plant and applied at different rates, forms, placements and timings.

Use of the isotope made it easier to measure the amount of N from applied ammonia found in corn plants at maturity.

As Nafziger pointed out in his October response, the actual amount of N the crop uses to maximize yield can’t be determined from the use of a single rate of N fertilizer. He also noted Griesheim’s research relied on fall-applied ammonia, without any spring-applied amounts for comparison.

Other factors to be considered are the location and conditions in Illinois. Soil types, soil depth, length of planting season and climate — even topography — can be significantly different compared to Canada’s corn-growing regions.

That doesn’t mean the results from Griesheim’s work are meaningless. There’s always the opportunity to learn and plenty of room for improvement with N rates and N-use efficiency.

Heading east

Paul Sullivan, a certified crop advisor, is the senior agronomist and owner of P.T. Sullivan Agro, based near Kinburn, Ont. in the Ottawa Valley. He believes more growers are attempting to fine-tune their N applications in corn. Such adjustments aren’t always comfortable, given their importance in corn production.

His experience in working with clients, viewing on-farm yield maps and conducting plots, has shown the right source, rate, time and placement all come into play but rate makes the most difference.

“N rate is key but can be elusive and human nature leans to ‘more is better’ just to make sure,” says Sullivan. “If N is applied by a systems approach using corn hybrid characteristics, landscape position and soil texture, then an optimum input is very profitable.

“By delaying applying a portion of your N until at least 30 days after planting, it provides in-season opportunity to assess the seasonal ‘soil cooking potential,’ and apply to spatial differences in supply/demand across the field.”

From an N-uptake perspective, Sullivan notes corn takes up 1.5 to 1.6 pounds of N per bushel produced through mass flow with water. That’s the total uptake over the growing season and about half of that is removed in the grain.

The corn plant will take up 10 per cent of its N supply from zero to 50 days, 50 per cent from 50 to 75 days and 40 per cent during the final 60 days in a 150-day growing season.

“Some growers may interpret ‘efficiency’ as spreading all of their N in one pass, usually pre-plant,” Sullivan says. “The reality of this application is it’s up to 50 days prior to the time when rapid N uptake starts in the corn plant.”

The 2023 Ontario Corn Committee hybrid performance site at Panmure Farms near Kinburn had high yields with what many would consider conservative N applied. The test location included 68 hybrids from 2450 to 2900 crop heat units. The trial averaged 30 bu./ac.

Field history included a diverse rotation with winter wheat in 2022, ideal seedbed conditions and precise planting completed by the Winchester Station research team. The silt-loam soil was quite high in soil phosphorus and potassium levels with a pH of 6.3 and soil organic matter levels of 3.7 per cent. The fertilizer broadcast pre-plant was 158 N – 46 P2O5 and 15 K2O -32S -1.1Zn -1.5 Mg.

“Diversity is the ticket, but not too much or too little for inputs, recognizing available water supply,” Sullivan adds. “Crop rotation brings many differences to the soil in root exudates, physical attributes and duration of ground cover. Diversify it as much as possible then keep it there with selective tillage and input management.”

Counterpoint

The debate over how N is measured in uptake is intriguing and Greg Stewart, a disciple of N-use efficiency and N rates in corn, is thankful for the Griesheim-Nafziger exchange and ensuing discussions. If nothing else, it has agronomists, researchers and growers talking more about how and why they apply nitrogen.

Stewart believes there’s a simpler, more effective method of measuring nitrogen use efficiency and deriving greater value leading to higher yields. That’s the simple use of a zero-N check strip — a practice he and others have advocated for years.

“The example I put up is if a grower applies 150 lbs. of N per acre and produces 200 bushels of corn yield, the one way of expressing nitrogen use efficiency would be 0.75 lbs. of N per bushel,” says Stewart, a biological field specialist with Syngenta Canada.

“But how much of it came from the soil? I think that’s a pretty reasonable question.”

Again, Stewart welcomes the debate, but the challenge lies in convincing growers to try the zero-N check strip, because most growers want to avoid losing yield for any reason.

“Yet it’s the only real way to answer the question of how much of the N in your corn is coming from the soil, independent of the N fertilizer,” says Stewart.

“Let’s say it’s the same field that we grew 200 bushels of corn with 150 lbs. of applied. What happens if the grower applies no nitrogen, and gets 100 bushels of corn? Now you realize that fully half of the nitrogen that came into the corn crop looks like it could have been supplied by the soil.”

The two knowns – 150 lb. of N leading to 200 bushels, and zero N yielding 100 bushels – provide what Stewart calls a “fairly eloquent response.” And Nafziger makes much the same inference from all the N-rate trials.

“That’s the key piece of information that you have say, ‘At zero N, we can reasonably estimate or infer how much of the N came from the soil,’” Stewart notes. “It’s a little additional fuel to the fire that if growers would like to get a handle on how to manage nitrogen, multi-rate trials are great, but they’re also a lot of work. But if a farmer runs a zero N strip, it gives them an estimate of what the soil N supply is.”

Stewart concedes running a zero strip the full length of a field makes most growers shudder, yet it provides an indication of the N-supplying capacity of that field. And it would cover the knolls or the depressions and across slopes, which is not necessarily provided by a 10- to 30-metre strip.

N-supply capacity

The next-stage benefit, from Stewart’s perspective, is in finding that zero N-rate yield. It creates a different mindset that no longer assesses nitrogen applications solely on the prospect of what it takes to generate 250 bushels of corn.

Instead, knowing that at zero N applied, the field is still capable of growing 150 bushels, gives a grower pause to ask what the combination of modern genetics and the soil generates at base level before any N is applied.

That is the N-supply capacity, and although it may not be a hard-target calculation, it’s still a reminder that there is a significant contribution of N in the soil, regardless of location.

Finding the N-use efficiency through a zero-N strip provides more than that baseline N “divining rod.” It begins to change the thought process on a more accurate optimum N-rate for fertilizer applications, aimed at maximizing yield.

“This past year, growers have grown 275-bushel corn on the same amount of nitrogen that they’ve grown 200-bushel corn, and that’s because the vast majority of the N for that crop is not coming from fertilizer,” says Stewart.

“If you have, let’s say 60 per cent of your N from the soil reserve, and you get a good year in terms of temperature, rainfall, mineralization and availability of nitrogen, you shouldn’t be surprised that you go to 275 instead of 200 with no more N fertilizer applied.

“That also fits into the context of where growers are sitting at today, having harvested a pretty big corn crop.”

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Now comes a case from Truro, N.S., where a resistant corn borer population confirmed in 2018 also appears resistant to another protein.

Before Ontario growers exhale in relief that it’s Nova Scotia and not southern Ontario, Tracey Baute, field crops entomologist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, says they should brace themselves.

Nova Scotia is first to have pests with dual resistance, but resistant populations of ECB have also been confirmed in New Brunswick, south of Montreal and near Carman, Man.

Given the ability of ECB to overwinter, the wide range of hosts and its ability to fly up to 40 kilometres in a single generation, their arrival in Ontario — whether from eastern or northern regions, Baute suggests — is a matter of time.

For ECB hybrids, there are only four Bt proteins that work against the pest. Three of those are Cry1s: Cry1Ab, Cry1F and Cry1A.105 and the fourth is Cry2Ab.

Although there are three Cry1s, the Cry2Ab has always been partnered with the Cry1A.105 in attempts to reduce resistance.

“In 2018, when Cry1F showed up resistant in Nova Scotia, we were caught off guard,” says Baute, and finding the other three locations with resistance to Cry1F was worrisome.

“But the most recent detection in 2022 in Truro with Cry1Ab was more alarming because that showed us the Cry1s are starting to fall apart and in fact, when they tested that population against the Cry1A.105, it’s cross-resistant, leaving only the Cry2Ab working.”

The loss of one protein isn’t good news, but it was alarming to see resistance develop to others in less than five years. Once that population starts to spread, it seriously reduces the options that work against corn borer.

Further complicating matters is that Cry3 proteins impart resistance into hybrids for corn rootworm. Resistance in those pests is an issue for dairy producers, many of whom plant three- and four-year continuous corn crops. The resistance challenge can be minimized by eliminating that third or fourth year of corn to break the cycle.

That’s not the case for ECB.

Too many factors

As Baute notes, the reasons for concern are multi-faceted: the ability of ECB moths to overwinter and fly and the extensive list of hosts among them. Potatoes, peppers, apples, hops and wheat are susceptible, and could adversely affect their respective downstream markets and consumers.

Another wrinkle in this discovery is the Cry1s for corn borer are in every hybrid grown in Canada. Even if growers plant rootworm hybrids, those hybrids will contain a corn borer protein.

There’s no immediate help from plant breeders, either. It will be at least eight years before something completely different from Cry1s and Cry2s reaches commercial availability.

The use of Bt as a foliar application, primarily in the organic sector, may contribute slightly to resistance development, even though it is applied prescriptively. Corn borer pests also are not exposed to the products for the full growing season.

“I am more concerned what Bt resistance will do to the effectiveness of Bt foliars that share the same proteins, as it will affect all organically grown commodities that are ECB hosts,” says Baute.

“They already have limited options for organic production and losing Bt foliar insecticides could have a large impact on not just corn production.”

Where do growers turn?

There’s no easy solution and Baute concedes she’s not as optimistic about the ECB-Cry protein dilemma as she is with breaking the cycle of resistance to CRW-Cry3 hybrids.

“It’s more of a change of practice that we need,” she says. “Corn borer will need strong mitigation measures like shredding corn stubble, not leaving that intact over the winter and perhaps spraying multiple times or implementing some biocontrol, like trichogramma wasps, to suppress this resistant population.”

It also may take a “return to yesterday” approach — planting non-Bt hybrids, obeying refuge requirements and scouting for signs that many have forgotten since the late 1990s:

• frass (sawdust-like material)
• holes in the stalk at the leaf axils
• broken tassels
• ear feeding through the shank or at the ear tip
• ear drop

“If we try to add more insecticides, corn borer is that trickier pest to control, where timing has to be right for a spray application before they enter the stalk of the plant,” says Baute.

“As soon as they do that, you can’t get to them, so it’s limited and that adds to the complexity of monitoring with traps and looking for egg masses and timing those applications properly.”

The post Old corn pest returns with new threat appeared first on Grainews.

Yet the process of breeding seeds with desired traits, rechecking for trait and yield performance and increasing those numbers for commercial availability takes more than 10 years.

Or does it?

With the use of continuous nursery locations in South America, the Caribbean and testing sites across North America, it’s now possible to concentrate the work done in 13 years into just five.

That was the story presented by David Lee, soybean breeder at Syngenta, during the company’s showcase in late August at its Arva Research Station near London.

Lee talked of Syngenta’s 50-year record for breeding soybeans, allowing it to develop germplasm for yield, disease and resistance.

Traditionally, selective breeding entailed combining two existing varieties using tweezers and moving pollen from one flower to the other.

“We used to do trials here during my first 20 years,” says Lee. “I’d spend the month of July lying out in a field with tweezers making pollinations.”

Now all crosses are done in Chile, with parent lines selected for yield, disease and herbicide traits. That’s done in November in Graneros, south of Santiago or north of Arica. Graneros is in an area of fertile soils and flat land. Arica is in a desert, where everything is grown in greenhouses with soil adjusted to raise the organic matter.

Developers do crosses from January to February with the expectation of getting 10 to 15 seeds per population in thousands of different populations.

“It’s a lot of manual labour,” says Lee, adding that those 10 to 15 seeds from each population go to Arica or Puerto Rico.

“We call them continuous nursery sites because they’re constantly planting seeds and they can get three generations of seed per calendar year.”

Using the facilities in Chile and Puerto Rico means F1, F2 and F3 generations can undergo more tissue sampling for DNA markers to determine presence of desired traits. Herbicide traits and insect resistance are other targets, as is the major gene for Phytophthora root rot.

For now, there’s nothing for white mould, although researchers are working on predictive models.

The process

Lee started 2023 with F1 seeds in Chile and Puerto Rico, and those were due for harvest last August. The team did some molecular marker analysis to ensure the cross was successful. Then they’ll be harvested and replanted with further tissue sampling from the F2 generation. Those will be harvested in December and January, planted back as the F3 generation and harvested in April.

In all, they take two to three million tissue samples each year.

The spring of 2024 will be the first time they see these materials in North America and those will be grown in “plant pull centres.”

“We have thousands of populations and may pull 50 to 100 plants from each, and those plants could be a new potential commercial variety,” says Lee. “We have hundreds of thousands of potential new varieties, conventional and traited materials.”

They’ll pull those next summer, but only a select few will be sent for the first yield testing in South America and grown in one-row yield plots. Those with early maturities will go to Graneros and anything longer will be sent to a centre in Argentina.

Approximately 95 per cent of lines will be dropped and each row of plants will be tissue-sampled to confirm they have the traits needed for a commercial variety. Those will be brought back to North America for Stage 3 testing.

“I’ll have multiple location yield-testing with eight to 10 replications, with three or four in Ontario and four or five in the U.S. Midwest,” says Lee. “I’m responsible for Group 1s and that’s for Ontario and Quebec and also for Minnesota and South Dakota.”

In summer 2025, they’ll do a small seed increase and plant 800 seeds with the “line maintenance group”, monitoring flower colour, plant height, pod pubescence colour and ensure they’re uniform varieties with no concerns. That fall, they’ll advance a select few to Puerto Rico for another increase; 8,000 to 10,000 seeds with some planted in November for harvest in February. From there, they’re sent to Homestead, Florida.

“In Florida, they’re planting five or six acres of seed there, so that gives us a large increase,” says Lee. “That’s harvested in April, then they come back to the U.S. Midwest for a larger increase.”

By 2026, there’ll be 25 to 35 locations in the U.S. Midwest. The focus is to regionally pinpoint where these varieties will perform best. At the end of 2026, they’ll have 4,000 units of seed.

By 2027, they’ll have another year of testing and from there, a commercial launch with 100,000 units of seed for sale.

“It’s interesting that when we pull plants, we get 65 seeds of a new variety,” says Lee. “From 2024 from 2027, we go from 65 seeds of a new variety to 100,000 units and it all starts from one simple cross.”

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Meet Reuben Stone.

Operating a value-added farm business near Cobden, Ont., about 100 km northwest of Ottawa, Stone grows several specialty crops including peas and hemp, while servicing a growing cover crop market. In the latter discipline he’s made a satisfying discovery: broadcasting cereal rye into a standing soybean crop works as a cover.

Planting winter wheat as a follow-up to soybean harvest may be the standard practice, but Stone maintains it’s “a bit of a stretch” for his region of eastern Ontario.

Some nearby growers can make that rotation work but he says broadcasting rye four to five weeks prior to soybean harvest creates a relay-cropping effect, with a fully established cover crop once the soybeans come off.

“I was introduced to a lot more of it from further south in the U.S.” says Stone, who operates Valley Bio Ltd. alongside his wife, Keanan, and their children.

“Rye is a favourite, just because of the winter hardiness and the aggressiveness in the spring. You can grow it between October to the middle of May and we can put on three tonnes of biomass — maybe four — and I don’t know of any other crop that can do that type of production through the coldest part of the year.”

In 2021, he covered 450 acres in six hours during the first week of September. The addition of a broadcast rye cover crop has several other advantages: at four weeks, Stone said it provided an improved equipment-carrying capability, cleaner soybeans and warmer soils at the onset of winter.

“You can see quite a difference. Where the soil is warmer, it takes longer to freeze up and the snow still melts,” he says adding that weed suppression is another advantage.

“There’s plenty of data now, whether that’s from the U.S. or here in Ontario. The numbers out of the U.S. say it’s a one-year payback and that can pay for the entire rye cover crop coming out of soybeans, just in the suppression of weeds.”

‘No complaints’

Stone has also fed cattle with the cover crop, although he concedes there’s a give-and-take. Harvesting at early boot stage means better protein levels, yet its maximum volumes come with a slightly later harvest.

“We have our own experiences that tended to be a little on the later side of the forage harvest window, getting on to what would be termed over-mature,” he says, noting there are data to show it’s acceptable as feed.

“It’s gone to beef cows and there have been no complaints, and it’s certainly gone over well with the small herd that we have.”

He also harvests it as wrapped silage because of timing in getting things off the field and managing subsequent crops. Most of a rye cover crop is harvested in the second half of May, so the bulk of the feed for his operation is taken care of early, allowing Stone to get ahead on planting.

There’s also the option of harvesting it as a grain crop, along with terminating early, later at planting or the forage option.

“There’s quite a bit of flexibility with a rye cover crop and there has to be a plan whenever you’re doing these things,” Stone says.

He tries to get into the field at the first hint of yellowing in the leaves and seed before leaf-drop. He also plants a moderate- to short-season maturity soybean variety on most of his acres, although he wants to try the practice with a longer-maturity bean in the future.

Long-term goals

The science behind rye as a cover crop is supportive on a short-term basis, but the benefits to soil health are what Stone refers to as “the long game.”

When he walks the fields a month after harvest, there’s less mud sticking to his boots and he’s found a visible difference in soil texture.

There are drawbacks, including tramping and seed costs. In a worst-case scenario, Stone estimates a loss of three or four bushels due to tramping, depending on equipment.

“You’re probably not going to set soybean yield records, but that isn’t the goal with this,” says Stone. “These practices help you to be more efficient with nutrients, with moisture, with overall farm profitability when you’re double-cropping a cereal or forage crop with soybeans the same year. It’s efficiency and overall profitability that are the goals.”

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That’s why the recent creation of the world’s first reference genome for oats is a significant step toward a more targeted approach to improving yield, disease tolerance and other characteristics.

Sequencing the oat genome is cause for optimism within the research community. Wubishet Bekele and Nicholas Tinker are two Canadian team members who took part in the work, alongside 31 researchers from 20 institutions in five countries.

Fully unraveling the oat genome took five years — in part because it is a unique and complex fusion of three sub-genomes.

The work has both scientific and practical applications.

“We sequenced, characterized and compared two oat genomes, plus two of their wild ancestors,” says Tinker, a research scientist from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Ottawa Research and Development Centre.

“We found parts of the chromosomes have been inverted or jumped over to other chromosomes and also that different oat varieties have different chromosome arrangements.”

These rearrangements are a natural process but oats seem to have tolerated it more than other species, which explains why the genome is so complicated. It also provides a roadmap to tame that complexity.

“Crosses between oats with different chromosome arrangements can have good or bad surprises,” says Tinker. “We now have tools and knowledge to avoid or anticipate those surprises.”

“We apply tools to assist in selection by predicting things that we can’t see,” adds Bekele, who is also a research scientist at AAFC in Ottawa.

“Breeding is painstakingly detailed work that distills tens of thousands of lines down to one or two cultivars over a 10- to 12-year cycle. We combine genomic information with performance data to develop predictive models that improve the speed and accuracy of that selection process.”

Having complete genome sequences allows researchers to better pinpoint traits and characteristics and begin to understand and predict the underlying genes and molecular processes.

“In addition to selecting progeny, we’re now trying to predict better parental combinations based on gene content and chromosomal configurations,” says Bekele. “This is the next level of improvement in genomics-assisted breeding, made possible by this new genomic resource.”

The sequencing provides well-timed good news for public-sector breeding, says Jeff Reid, general manager of SeCan.

“This is foundational to where we’re trying to go as a country. There should be no question as to whether oat breeding needs to be maintained or growing in terms of capacity.”

Reid refers to the “complicated puzzle” between government and producer funding groups, to figure out who will take responsibility for upstream foundational research versus closer-to-market testing. Will it be AAFC, the universities, industry or producers?

Who will participate in research for smaller and regional crops? And who will take responsibility for ensuring products reach the market in a way that’s available to every farmer in each region?

“When we talk about mapping the genome, that’s awesome,” says Reid. “That should help us to make much more rapid progress when we’re looking at introducing tools like gene editing.

“But that’s only going to help to tweak specific traits within a variety. In order to get the overall yield and general agronomic adaptation, there is no replacement for boots-on-the-ground testing and multi-location variety testing.”

Without making selections in the environment where a crop will be grown, it’s difficult to make progress.

“That’s really a key message that we’ve been trying to hammer home as we look to solve this puzzle,” says Reid. “This needs to happen on the ground where the crop is grown.”

– Ralph Pearce is a Glacier FarmMedia contributor.

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The precision ag system, designed by Dot Technology Corp., attracted considerable attention going through its paces during the annual ag showcase, held outside Woodstock, Ont. The demonstrations took place as part of a partnership with Corteva Agriscience.

The U-shaped model is manufactured to incorporate “Dot-ready” implements, with only a few designs currently available: the SeedMaster Ultra DSR (Dot Single Rank) 30-foot seeder, the SeedMaster row-crop planter, a Pattison Connect PLU 120-foot sprayer and a New Leader NL5000 G5 spreader.

Growers in Western Canada are well acquainted with the Dot A-U1 platform but the reactions from those attending Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show were a pleasant surprise to Dot Technology CEO Rob Saik. He had texts and e-mails from eastern growers expressing interest in seeing and learning more about its potential.

“The response has been incredible — really good,” said Saik, noting most growers are looking for ‘economy of scale’ or the cost-efficiency of the technology.

“Out west, we’re looking for scale, where we have to have two or three DOTs working simultaneously in the field. Here (in Eastern Canada), one DOT could satisfy most farmers that are in that 2,000- to 2,500-acre range.”

Interest in the East is sufficient, added Saik, that he and his team are trying to restructure their plans to get a Dot unit available for demonstrations in the spring of 2020.

The technology is marketed to save time and fuel and reduce pollution, with a mobile, diesel-powered engine, capable of reducing overall costs by 20 per cent.

The Dot A-U1 effectively surrounds a specially designed implement and operates via an on-frame computer that is fed detailed mapping requirements. An operator can monitor the unit’s progress and can assume control using a tablet specifically configured for the unit.

Although currently designed for four implements, Saik stated that interest is coming from different manufacturers about newer configurations.

As he pointed out, smaller, more specialized implements such as a rock picker or land roller might be ideal candidates for such innovation, along with the better-known names in farm equipment.

“DOT gives them the strategy,” said Saik, following a brief presentation on the unit. “The companies can come on as a Dot-Ready implement manufacturer and we make that available to them like another option on a Swiss Army knife.”

Current pricing on the Dot A-U1 Power Platform is US$260,000.

— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont.

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Some of this trend is attributable to single-mode-of-action products and a reliance on one or two chemistries or technologies — but the adaptability of weed, disease and insect species can’t be underestimated. Their respective abilities to select for resistance and evolve beyond an active ingredient or single mode of action is well-documented.

That’s why the move to multiple modes of action (MMOA) is gaining popularity. According to Glen Forster, technical development manager with BASF, growers are well aware of the impacts of herbicide resistance, particularly since they’re dealing with it at greater frequencies. That’s why many newer fungicides launched in the past four or five years are taking the multiple-mode-of-action approach, he said.

“With fungicides, there’s a lot of education going on in the marketplace to help producers become more aware, and that it’s important to think about resistance management before resistance occurs,” Forster said. “Growers are well-versed in herbicides but the knowledge base on resistance management in fungicides is becoming stronger on a yearly basis.”

One of the primary challenges in sharing that message comes from the frequency and intensity of herbicides versus fungicides. Growers must manage different weed species on an annual basis, whether it’s Canada fleabane or lamb’s quarters. But diseases are different: in any year, the right environmental conditions must be present, the host species must be at the right stage and there have to be sufficient amounts of the pathogen present — all at the same time.

“Even though you may spray the same mode of action on a wheat plant and then the next year, spray the same mode of action on a soybean crop, since the diseases may not be affecting that crop, you don’t have a selection pressure on an annual basis,” Forster said. “If the disease isn’t present in the field or the weather conditions aren’t conducive for that disease, you won’t have selection pressure.”

Advances in breeding technology have also helped growers, with resistance “packages” for diseases such as phytophthora root rot in soybeans and fusarium head blight in wheat. In some years, such breeding enhancements might negate the need for a fungicide application in wheat fields, or at least reduce their number.

But not every disease package is perfect, hence the industry’s move to MMOAs. No matter how sporadic a disease incidence might be, or whether its intensity is low, the key with MMOAs is to be proactive — to reduce the potential for the selection of resistance before it has a chance to start the selection process.

“The chance of having a population that’s resistant to both a strobilurin and a succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor (SDHI) in a field with a multiple mode of action is extremely rare,” Forster said.

“Although fungicides may not need to be MMOA today, it’s always a better strategy to use those prior to resistance selection, to prevent losing one of those tools you have. Diseases will adapt and we need to make sure that we constantly preserve the tools that we have from a fungicide performance perspective, and prevent disease from occurring.”

— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont. Follow him at @arpee_AG on Twitter.

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During the 2017 edition of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show at Woodstock, Ont., Deveau, the application technology specialist for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) at Simcoe, spoke to farmers about a new continuous-rinse system.

In some European jurisdictions, farmers have lost the freedom to do sprayer cleanouts at their own discretion. With point source contamination threatening ground water sources, some governments have responded to the detection of farm chemicals, so legislation was enacted dictating that farmers must perform a cleanout before they leave a field.

“They weren’t allowed to leave until their sprayer held one or two per cent of the original tank concentration as sampled at the nozzle,” said Deveau. “Recognizing that a conventional triple rinse can take 20 or 30 minutes, that adds a lot of time to somebody’s day when they have to be clean coming out of every single field.”

In Europe, engineers realized sprayers typically have one pump to either spray from the boom, circulate spray or draw water from a clean water tank. Unfortunately, they can’t do all of those at the same time.

In a triple-rinse scenario, there can be five to 15 gallons of spray mix left in the lines, or the sump pump, or in the tank.

“If you introduce one-third of the clean water you’re carrying using the main pump through the rinse-down nozzle, you get slightly less dirty water, and that’s a dilution,” Deveau said. “Then you circulate that through the system as best you can, climb back into the cab and spray it out the boom. But again, you’ve left five, 10 or 15 gallons of now more-dilute spray behind.”

That step is repeated twice, with the remaining solution becoming more dilute each time. But has enough water been added to reach that one or two per cent?

European engineers found that using smaller amounts, rinsed through the system repeatedly, is more effective. To help, they added a dedicated low-volume pump for the water, creating a continuous-rinse system.

“It draws clean water from the tank and introduces it to the rinse-down nozzles directly, bypassing the plumbing and the main pump,” Deveau said. “The main pump can then be used to continually spray, and when it’s empty, you flip a switch in the cab and clean water displaces the dirty water rather than dilutes it.”

The good news is that it will drop that concentration down to that one or two per cent level, and do it in a fraction of the time — from 30 minutes for a triple-rinse, down to 10.

“Best of all, you never left the cab, so operator exposure is nil, and you’ve sprayed that rinsate out over the field where it can break down naturally down rather than having point source contamination.”

Deveau worked with HJV Equipment to adapt the system to a Rogator, which cost roughly $1,500. More recently, he worked with Green Lea Fertilizer and Application Equipment to install a similar system on a Case IH Patriot 4440 for about $2,000-$2,500.

That may sound like a lot of money, but considering the time savings, it pays for itself fairly quickly.

— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont. Follow him at @arpee_AG on Twitter.

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