ΕΠΙΚΟΙΝΩΝΊΑ ΚΑΙ ΠΌΡΟΙ

Events - 02/03/2015

ERMES project and precision farming tools

On February 27th 2015 some ERMES researchers from CNR-IREA  and a few local farmers from Lomellina rice district took part in the regional exhibition called Fiera in Campo, held at Centro Fiere di Caresanablot (Vercelli, Italy). The oral presentations were mainly focused on the current rice cultivation techniques and precision farming opportunities.

The main speakers invited on Febraury 27th, such as University of Turin (DISAFA Department) and Ente Nazionale Risi, one of ERMES end-users, described the energy-save and water management solutions that they could experience in rice cultivations at regional and European level.

The closing session of the day was of considerable importance for ERMES research purposes. It was indeed dedicated to the adoption of precision farming tools an nitrogen fertilization to support and monitor the rice growing practices.

Precision agriculture is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. The practice of precision farming was enabled by the advent of GPS. The farmer’s and/or researcher’s ability to locate their precise position in a field allows for the creation of maps of the spatial variability of as many variables as can be measured.

Precision agriculture has been enabled by technologies like crop yield monitors mounted on GPS equipped combines, multi- and hyper-spectral aerial and satellite imagery, information technology and geospatial tools.

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Precision farming: key technologies and concepts ( cema-agri.org)

In this framework, ERMES researchers aim at creating added-value information for the rice sector by integrating in crop models operational Copernicus core products, maps derived from SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), optical Earth Observation data processing and in situ observations.