ServiTech and Sentera form crop monitoring and field imagery partnership

Companies say partnership will enable agronomists to better detect field issues in real time.

Agronomist addresses corn farmers’ concerns heading into planting

The Next Generation Of Plant Breeding Is Powered By Visual Technologies

Visual technology is being deployed across the agricultural industry to enable rapid phenotyping, a critical part of the $3.9B spent annually on seed research & development.

Beans and Bull - Badger Bean

Degraded Soil Costs Corn Farmers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year: Study

Massive monocrop farming of corn, in the United States, brings with it a whole host of push-and-pull requirements.  This style of agriculture drains the soil of nutrients, making it incapable of high-yield production. To make up for that, farmers have to drench the soils in fertilizer. A new study from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder ran models to get a sense of what the economic costs of this system are and found they are quite staggering.  A key problem with trying to figure out exactly how degraded soils are, at least in the US and some other countries

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewc...

UC Davis receives grant to increase dietary fiber in wheat

Diets lacking fiber are linked to health concerns such as colon cancer and heart diseases, but Americans only consume 30 percent of the recommended daily amount of fiber. One way to increase fiber consumption is to produce wheat varieties that contain more fiber. The University of California, Davis, has a received a nearly $500,000 Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) to increase the dietary fiber content in wheat products. Bay State Milling, California Wheat Commission and Limagrain Cereal Seeds provided matching funds for a total investment of $959,997. “A small increase in fiber content in refined flour products can translate into a significant boost in the public’s consumption of dietary fiber.” said FFAR Executive Director Sally Rockey. “By developing wholesome food with more fiber, and the same great taste, we can lower the incidence of preventable, diet-related diseases.” Refined wheat flour, commonly known as all-purpose flour, is more popular than whole wheat flour in most industrialized countries, but lower in fiber. To increase fiber in refined flour, UC Davis researchers, led by Jorge Dubcovsky, are investigating ways to increase wheat dietary fiber using modified starch synthesis enzymes. The first generation of varieties with increased dietary fiber in the plant’s starch showed reduced grain yield, making the grain more costly for consumers. Dubcovsky’s team is developing a second generation of wheat varieties with high fiber in the refined flour but with a higher grain yield. Using genetic tools and molecular markers the researchers are identifying genes responsible for wheat yield, quality and fiber content. With this information, the researchers are testing combinations of wheat genetics, environmental conditions and growing practices that encourage high-yield and high-fiber crops. “Most of the refined flour is starch, so the trick is to hide the fiber in the starch,” said Dubcovsky. “We increased the relative amount of ‘r...

How Sales Agronomists use DroneDeploy to Boost Product Value | DroneDeploy

Arm Your Sales Teams with Agronomic Tools to Improve Client Relations.