Potato Yield Project

Potato Yield Project

Susan Allen
Susan Allen
Smart Potato Growing

I'm Susan Allen At a recent ag technology meeting the discussion turned to potatoes and the hurdles growers face with new data technology. Patrick Williams Tech Manager and precision ag specialst for Simplot shared what they are working on

WILLIAMS: One project we are working on in particular is a potato yield project. There is a company out of Canada called GreenTronics and they make a sensor system that basically weighs the potatoes as they are going across the harvester before they are going into the truck.

You told me there were some issues with that?

One of the issues of using a sensor that simply measures the weight is the fact that those harvesters also will bring up rocks or dirt clods or other foreign material and weigh that alongside the potato. One of the things we have to work out to really good data out of this is how we separate that material out before it gets to the sensor, or how do we measure that data with a different type of sensor that only reads the potatoes rather than all of it. If we can do that, that's going to give us a very valuable data set, it will show us site specifically within that field, the yield of potatoes whether for example its 30 tons, 35 tons, or 40 tons and we'll know that certain spots are doing better in the field than we can do things to address that.

Tomorrow Patrick will be back on the program to discuss another new project he is working on with an exciting new application for drones.

Previous ReportGetting Involved At A Grass Roots Level
Next ReportFarming With Drones..Beyond Just Pictures