WESTERN AUSTRALIAN farmers, researchers and technologists have developed a process for grower-driven experimentation, supported by robust statistical analysis through the OFE platform.
As a result, graingrowers and agronomists can be their own onfarm scientists using a new tool developed by Australian tech company NGIS, as part of a three-year research collaboration.
Centre for Crop and Disease Management research fellow and project leader Julia Easton said farmers were constantly testing, trialling, hypothesising and calculating risk of different management practices.
"The OFE Platform gives them the scientific and analytical tools to conduct an experiment on a small plot understand the results and then apply them across a larger paddock-scale," Dr Easton said.
The OFE platform leverages next generation cloud geospatial technology to effectively analyse field trials that incorporate the underlying variability in paddock productivity.
More than 35 farmers and six grower groups participated in the Food Agility CRC project, running 50 experiments testing the application of fertilisers and the impact on yield.
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Merredin farmer Mick Caughey has been using variable rate technology for more than eight years and said this project has provided him with the opportunity to make data-driven decisions.
"The project allowed us to look at the optimum fertiliser rate over three seasons on crop yields on five different soil types," Mr Caughey said.
"The data analysis across the paddock found there was real potential to increase the yield on historically lower-performing soil types.
"I was able to change my management on those soil types and it paid off.
"It's really good to do onfarm trials, but to measure them and apply the results over a larger scale so you can make proper financial decisions, is very important."
A key part of the research is the spatial analytics method known as geographically weighted regression (GWR).
"Small plot trials are an important part of agricultural research, however the results don't always translate when you scale up to the whole paddock," Dr Easton said.
"GWR analysis development, led by Dr Fiona Evans from Murdoch University, helps to understand the variation in yield across the paddock and how much is influenced by the treatment or by spatial variability.
"The OFE platform allows farmers to estimate the return on investment of a treatment, providing an economic rationale for changing management practices."
The next stage will develop the analytics capability to scale results beyond the paddock boundary, refining the platform and making it more widely available via NGIS, and developing statistics that underpin treatments beyond fertilisers.
This project was partnership between Food Agility CRC, Curtin University, Western Australian Government through the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DJTSI) and the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) as well as NGIS Australia in collaboration with CSBP Fertilisers and the Grower Group Alliance.
