Written by Guy Peckett
An on-farm weather station offers growers the chance to reduce their reliance on fungicides, by predicting disease outbreaks in crops.
Cordulus’s station uses precise, local weather data, to power its disease and pest climatic infection models. This calculates the risk of yellow rust, brown rust and fusarium head blight. The model also estimates when septoria will become visible in the crop. Pest risks are assessed using growing degree days – corresponding to insect development.
Cristina Lugas, Channel Partner Manager at Cordulus, says the weather station’s software differentiates it from anything else on the market. Their algorithm processes more than three million data points daily, providing farmers with hyperlocal, actionable insights and a forecast up to 52 percent more accurate than traditional ones.
All warnings are displayed in an app, avoiding the need to physically check the weather station.
This gives agronomists and growers the opportunity to apply nutrition to strengthen crops defences against disease or pests. Rather than prophylactically spraying fungicides, or insecticides.
The weather station also has soil moisture and temperature sensors, to not only aid drilling decisions but give an indication of crop stress, which could lead to disease and pest outbreaks.
A precipitation radar, sensors for wind speed and direction, air temperature, pressure, humidity and dew point, a rain gauge and solar panel, also provide data for the app.
