LWV24078 Technology for crop care of the future (TS-02-226-018)

Within “Technology for crop care of the future” our aim is to do research and benchmark technology for crop care in arable farming crops (potatoes), as well as perennial fruit crops (pears). In potato crops, adequate control of Phytophthora infestans is necessary and more than ever is setting the bar for high quality deposition patterns in the crop. The same is true for pears, with infections of scab and canker where adequate spray deposition is required on fruits, twigs and leaves. Additionally, our team will work on mechanical weeding and spot spraying for effective weed control. Our activities centre around the benchmarking of precision crop care. In this activity, the technical and agronomical performance of the crop protection activities will be monitored and reported. One of the tasks is to provide proper as-applied maps and digital information such that in the first years the trials and in the later years the farmers practice provide trust to the end users and society at large. The effective optimal precision crop care is the linking work package bringing together the multidisciplinary aspects of future crop care. The project will not only optimize high quality precision application technology, but also integrate new emerging technologies. This will be done while considering the farmers business model which impacts on the ways we perform optimal crop care. A third work package has the aim to provide proper sensor technologies and digital tools to be integrated on top of current precision application technologies in the market. Finally, our societal and economical aspects work package is aimed at helping the farmer and the supply chain with value creation based on the process in the other work packages.