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A New Chip Tells Farmers When to Water

Shivetya 12y ago
so dumb question, would not some forms of spectral analysis or similar work? This chip solution seems a bit too work intensive for most crops, would not large fields be a bit much for installs? for my dumb question I found this http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/Hyperspectral/hyperAgricultur.html http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/Hyperspectral/hyperAgricultur....
- jasonlaramburu 12y ago
  Spectral analysis (via drone, satellite, airplane etc) is good but won't give you the resolution of 1 chip per plant. It does seem labor intensive to implant every plant, but not impossible. Even large farmers trim and take cuttings from individual plants.
  - sparkman55 12y ago
    You can get plenty of resolution off an airplane. I have seen aerial imagery of sufficient resolution to do stand count analysis, which is basically counting individual green shoots of corn in the spring. As another poster mentioned, though, spectral analysis shows problems in the leaves of the plant, where it is too late: if your plant is yellowing due to lack of water or nutrients, you've already decreased the potential yield from that plant. It's better to detect deficiencies in the ground.
- rmason 12y ago
  Assuming you could cost effectively do a spectral analysis it is still not optimal. By the time the plants are showing stress it is past the optimal time to water. The true place for these chips is university and cooperative extension research. By knowing more about how plants use water they might be able to come up with a more easily measurable metric that farmers can use.
jasonlaramburu 12y ago
Interesting-- tensiometers have been used in soil for a few years now, but never implanted into the plant. Tensiometers basically measure the pressure change caused by plant roots soaking up water.
jqm 12y ago
I actually did an internship on a grape farm in the early 90's. Getting a degree in agonomy I was all hyped on modern technology and exited about tensiometers. The 20 year old me wanted to install them, but was shut down by the old Hispanic foreman during the meeting. He had been growing grapes for 30+ years. When I asked him how he decided when to water he said... simple. See these weeds growing under the grapes? (it was a type of pigweed I believe) When they start to droop it's time to water. Turns out, the grapes roots are deeper and the vines much larger than the weed, so this was in fact a free (and pretty accurate) tensiometer. I love tech. And not to be a cynic, but I kind of doubt many serious "farmers" read this magazine. The old foreman maybe converted me to a degree of traditionalism. There doesn't need to be a tech solution for everything. Sometimes simple time tested solutions are better. EDIT: One more point. Suppose one was able to figure out an individual plant's water needs. I don't know of any irrigation system that would let you meet it. The block, patch, field, whatever gets watered all together. Unless you send people to adjust individual emitters or something. And, if you are doing that you have undoubtedly spent far more money than you will ever make back in increased yields or water savings. This "modern farmer" magazine kind of drives me nuts and I see it posted here on HN frequently. EDIT2: I guess I'm at my commenting limit so I'll leave the reply here. I agree with poster who says tech is necessary to feed more in the future. But this chip, in a production setting, is a non-solution looking for a problem. And there is way too much stuff like this that people think are "breakthroughs". People have trouble comprehending scale when it comes to agriculture. A tray in a hydroponic gardens, even a roof full of hydroponic gardens... cool, but it isn't going to ever provide a significant portion of the worlds food. And it is way too expensive to set up and maintain for what it provides. Now... for specialty applications and a few off-season vegetables it's fine. But many thousands of acres and lots of water are required to produce the real bulk of our food... i.e. grains. The aquaponics systems pictured in the links below wouldn't even sufficiently feed the two guys in the picture. And... examining the moisture usage of individual plants per watering cycle... great for research or hobbyist or specialist crops, not practical day to day production agriculture. That's my point.
- techpeace 12y ago
  Unfortunately, simple, time-tested solutions likely won't get food production to the place it needs to be in 30 years.
qthrul 12y ago
This reminded me of 2008: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-12-04/how-to-make-the-drought-in-the-south-pay http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-12-04/how-to-make-t... [Spoiler alert] soil sensors + telemetry + spectrum = Internet of Things [/Spoiler alert]

so dumb question, would not some forms of spectral analysis or similar work? This chip solution seems a bit too work intensive for most crops, would not large fields be a bit much for installs? for my dumb question I found this http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/Hyperspectral/hyperAgricultur.html http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/Hyperspectral/hyperAgricultur....

jasonlaramburu 12y ago
Spectral analysis (via drone, satellite, airplane etc) is good but won't give you the resolution of 1 chip per plant. It does seem labor intensive to implant every plant, but not impossible. Even large farmers trim and take cuttings from individual plants.
- sparkman55 12y ago
  You can get plenty of resolution off an airplane. I have seen aerial imagery of sufficient resolution to do stand count analysis, which is basically counting individual green shoots of corn in the spring. As another poster mentioned, though, spectral analysis shows problems in the leaves of the plant, where it is too late: if your plant is yellowing due to lack of water or nutrients, you've already decreased the potential yield from that plant. It's better to detect deficiencies in the ground.
rmason 12y ago
Assuming you could cost effectively do a spectral analysis it is still not optimal. By the time the plants are showing stress it is past the optimal time to water. The true place for these chips is university and cooperative extension research. By knowing more about how plants use water they might be able to come up with a more easily measurable metric that farmers can use.

jasonlaramburu 12y ago

Interesting-- tensiometers have been used in soil for a few years now, but never implanted into the plant. Tensiometers basically measure the pressure change caused by plant roots soaking up water.

jqm 12y ago

I actually did an internship on a grape farm in the early 90's. Getting a degree in agonomy I was all hyped on modern technology and exited about tensiometers. The 20 year old me wanted to install them, but was shut down by the old Hispanic foreman during the meeting. He had been growing grapes for 30+ years. When I asked him how he decided when to water he said... simple. See these weeds growing under the grapes? (it was a type of pigweed I believe) When they start to droop it's time to water. Turns out, the grapes roots are deeper and the vines much larger than the weed, so this was in fact a free (and pretty accurate) tensiometer. I love tech. And not to be a cynic, but I kind of doubt many serious "farmers" read this magazine. The old foreman maybe converted me to a degree of traditionalism. There doesn't need to be a tech solution for everything. Sometimes simple time tested solutions are better. EDIT: One more point. Suppose one was able to figure out an individual plant's water needs. I don't know of any irrigation system that would let you meet it. The block, patch, field, whatever gets watered all together. Unless you send people to adjust individual emitters or something. And, if you are doing that you have undoubtedly spent far more money than you will ever make back in increased yields or water savings. This "modern farmer" magazine kind of drives me nuts and I see it posted here on HN frequently. EDIT2: I guess I'm at my commenting limit so I'll leave the reply here. I agree with poster who says tech is necessary to feed more in the future. But this chip, in a production setting, is a non-solution looking for a problem. And there is way too much stuff like this that people think are "breakthroughs". People have trouble comprehending scale when it comes to agriculture. A tray in a hydroponic gardens, even a roof full of hydroponic gardens... cool, but it isn't going to ever provide a significant portion of the worlds food. And it is way too expensive to set up and maintain for what it provides. Now... for specialty applications and a few off-season vegetables it's fine. But many thousands of acres and lots of water are required to produce the real bulk of our food... i.e. grains. The aquaponics systems pictured in the links below wouldn't even sufficiently feed the two guys in the picture. And... examining the moisture usage of individual plants per watering cycle... great for research or hobbyist or specialist crops, not practical day to day production agriculture. That's my point.

techpeace 12y ago
Unfortunately, simple, time-tested solutions likely won't get food production to the place it needs to be in 30 years.

qthrul 12y ago

This reminded me of 2008: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-12-04/how-to-make-the-drought-in-the-south-pay http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-12-04/how-to-make-t... [Spoiler alert] soil sensors + telemetry + spectrum = Internet of Things [/Spoiler alert]