Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

January 6,2010 (Field Tour) A field tour was organized as per the following schedule: 10:00 Leave Campbell House Inn 10:30 - 11:30 Main Chance Research Farm (GPS test facility, Sensors research) 11:30 - 12:00 Lunch at Main Chance 12:00 - 12:30 Travel to Woodford Reserve Distillery 1:00 - 2:30 Woodford Reserve tour and tasting 3:00 - 4:00 Three Chimneys horse farm tour 4:15 - 5:15 Animal Research Center 5:30 - Buffalo Trace Distillery tour and dinner January 7, 2010 (Summary by Dr. Sreekala Bajwa, University of Arkansas) Meeting started at 8 am with registration and continental breakfast. At 8.30 am, Tim Stombaugh, the committee chair, called the meeting to order and welcomed all participants. Tim invited Dr. Nancy Cox, Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture to welcome the group. Dr. Cox welcomed everyone to the University of Kentucky campus, provided a brief history of Goodbarn, talked about the college, and the State's agriculture programs. The chair reminded that it is time to renew the committee. The incoming chair will have to take the responsibility for renewing the committee. These are the suggestions made for writing the proposal to renew the committee: It was suggested that the incoming officers collect a list of research, extension and educational objectives for the next 5 years and use that information to develop the committee's goals and objectives. Address the 5 challenge areas (climate change, food security, childhood nutrition and obesity, sustainable energy, food safety) for grant funding through AFRI program in the proposal. K. C. Ting, advisor to the committee, clarified that it is not a regional committee but a national committee and therefore, annual meetings can be held anywhere. However, the reporting has to go through the north-central region. Invited Speakers There were five speakers, who gave presentations. The first three presentations were made in the morning and the last two in the afternoon. Tim Stombaugh introduced each speaker to the group prior to their presentation. A summary of the presentations is given below. 1. Title: Precision Farming Adoption in Ohio Marv Batte, Fred N. VanBuren Professor of Farm Management, Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics, The Ohio State University. Marv talked about the precision farming adoption survey his group conducted in 1999, 2003 and 2007. In 2003, approximately 2500 farmers were contacted and 58% responded. The survey indicated that precision agriculture systems were reported as more beneficial in 2003 and 2007 than in 1999. He also reported that small farmers were as likely to be pleased with precision agriculture systems as large farmers. A suggestion was given to him that efficiency improvement in farming should be considered as a precision agriculture practice, which was not included in the previous surveys. 2. Title: Precision Agriculture collaboration: Agronomic, Engineering & Economics Bruce Erickson, Purdue Univ. & Terry Griffin, University of AR Bruce emphasized the need for other scientists to develop early collaboration with economists. During discussion it was pointed out that economists can address people's behavioral change with economics, social dimensions of change and the benefits of risk aversion. In the proposal writing stage, a collaborator from economics may be able to provide the value of proposition in a grant proposal. 3. Title: Seed Technology: Discovering, Delivering, Yielding Glenn Murphy, Monsanto This talk focused on past yield fluctuations and the future need for growth in food production and crop productivity. Among many factors that may enhance yield, the speaker talked about Monsanto's goal and progress on development of breeding new varieties with desirable genetics and traits. A question was raised about the need for developing management strategies appropriate for the moving target of crops (with different productivity and input requirements) since most PA practices that are developed assume a stationary target for crop performance. 4. Equipment and Technology Concept for Nutrient Management Larry Hendrickson, John Deere & Co presented The talk focused mainly on fertilizer management as a mechanism to increase crop yield to meet the fast-growing future demand. One of the main themes in the talk was N application, including pros and cons of anhydrous ammonia versus urea and field conditions where one fertilizer may be beneficial over the other to reduce N volatilization. He pointed out that application of anhydrous ammonia in wetter low lying areas and urea in drier higher elevation areas can reduce N volatilization. He also indicated that N2O release from fertilized fields is a major concern. 5. Input Application: Accuracy and Precision Scott Shearer, University of Kentucky Scott talked about speed variations between ends while turning and the resulting errors in application rate, issues of double application in overlapping areas, and the importance of boom section control and autoguidance. After lunch, there was a tour of two labs at the University of Kentucky, the yield monitor testing lab, and the Milk Tracking and Security lab. Text Books & eXtension At the conclusion of all the presentations, Fran Pierce provided an update on the text books that are being planned or under development. The "GIS Application in Agriculture" series is planning to have 3 books published. Bruce Erickson gave an update on eXtension project. Future meeting location & timing Tim Stombaugh announced that the 2011 meeting will be held at Little Rock, Arkansas. This announcement was followed by a discussion on the timing of the 2011 meeting. The group agreed that January-February is not a good time for a majority of the people due to grant proposal submission deadlines, Beltwide meeting and AETC meeting. There was a consensus among the attendees that the meeting time should be moved to either late March or first week of March. Spring break may be a good time to have the meeting. The meeting should end on Friday and shouldnt go into Saturday. It was suggested that the meeting should be held from Wednesday through Friday. The meeting was adjourned around 4.40 pm. January 8 (Summary from notes prepared by Tim Mueller, University of Kentucky) KC Ting provided information about NCERA-180 deadlines and requested to write proposal (issues, justification). Scott shearer agreed to be default administrative advisor, but will look for others who have a passion for this. He mentioned about the new changes that will be in place regarding the selection of administrative advisor and committee members, respectively. The following members were identified: Annual report writing: Pedro Andrade, Dharmendra Saraswat, Tim Stombaugh-will lead this effort Write Project - David Clay, Tom Mueller, Pedro Andrade, Bruce Ericson, Larry Hendrickson After discussions, new title of the project was suggested as "Precision technologies for food, fiber, and energy production". Some ideas were put forth by Francis Pierce (Fran) to include material in the perspective of global climate. It was suggested that mission statement should link to global challenges such as o global food security and hunger o climate change, o food safety, etc. Fran mentioned about the science article that discusses how the rate of change of food projection is dropping. Tim Stombaugh agreed to provide a link to the article on the website. Fran also mentioned about sending some notes for the new proposal to Tom Mueller for the development of the proposal. Newell Kitchen summarized the history of tri socities- CSSA, ASA, and SSSA. He discussed plans for restructuring to make these societies more responsive. Rak Khosla spoke about the organization of 10th International Conference on Precision Agriculture in Denver, Colorado during July 18-21. He also mentioned about the creation of International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA). He provided following additional details concerning ISPA: o three functions to begin with 1) conference ispss - EuropeanConference on Precision Agriculture - they want to do this acpa- is very interested but not confirmed proceedings awards and recognitions 2) Web portal quarterly e-newsletter, world wide directory, virtual office 3) Scientific Journal the international journal of precision agriculture will become the society journal, maybe about 28 journals 4) Membership - included with conference registration - fee based for new-conference attendee - online access to international journal for precision agriculture (1.92 impact factor) - discounted hard copy subscription - world wide reach to people/members - conference (discounted registration fee) - society awards and registration - the fee would be about $50 per year , but that would be included as part of the attendance fee for the conference - infrastructure - by-laws have been written but have been simplified over time, very simple now Slava Adamchuk informed about the IUSS working group on proximal soil sensing. He further informed about the publication of a book on the topic and a website dedicated to the cause (www.proximalsoilsensing.org) is available. Two workshops on high resolution digital soil sensing and mapping is scheduled in 2011. Progress on ASABE standards were submitted as follows: ASABE -standards x573 - procedures for evaluating variable rate granular material application accuracy (John Fulton) - under development , x578 - yield monitor performance test (Scott Shearer) - published, x579 yield monitor field test engineering procedure (Randy Taylor, voted and official , x587 - dynamic testing of global positioning devices used in agriculture (Tim Stombaugh) ISO 12188-1 (FDIS), x605 gps based auto-guidence system testing (Slava Adamchuk), x611 - standard for mapping yield and associated data (Alex Thomasson) - under early development

NCERA-180 Summary of Accomplishments 2009-2010 Research NCERA-180 activities and the relationships formed through these activities have facilitated many research and extension accomplishments over the past year. The following is a brief summary of some of these activities as reported by participants from Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Research Projects reported from Arkansas: Researchers in Arkansas have continued working on problems related to soil compaction, in-season site-specific determination of plant nutrient needs, and statistical site-specific evaluation techniques for grain and cotton crops. They are also evaluating the utility of variable-rate lime application for validating lime recommendation rates. Their research also extends beyond traditional grain and cotton production to the nursery industry where they are evaluating methods of inventorying field-grown shade trees. Research Projects reported from Florida: Variable Rate Controller performance testing on a hoop sprayer was carried out at the Citrus Research and Education Center (CREC) and in commercial groves. The controller performance can be seen on a short video available at - http://128.227.177.113/pa/Video.html. Hoop sprayers are ideal for profitable caretaking of young solidest citrus plantings such as in new Advanced Citrus Production System (ACPS) blocks because the agrochemical savings could be greater compared to a conventional air blast sprayer. Additionally because the application is not low- or ultra low-volume, nutrient supplements can be included in the spray as part of a comprehensive Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program. The controller is being adapted and tested for variable rate or spot spraying of weeds. Efficient weed sensing is crucial to the success of this application, and initial results from using a small color digital camera looked promising when green color pixels were extracted to identify weed positions on the ground. Two simple software programs have been developed and posted online to assist growers when setting up their variable rate fertilizer spreaders: http://128.227.177.113/pa/Software.html. The sensor angle program will calculate the best angle to use when adjusting the sensor eyes so that they detect the required canopy size of the trees. A machine vision based trash removal system has been designed to quantify the amount of trash materials such as leaves and twigs generated during harvesting by a continuous citrus canopy shake and catch harvester. Two de-stemmers with different lengths of rollers (0.61 m and 0.91 m) were compared for their trash removal efficiency. The extended de-stemmer removed more trash materials than the regular de-stemmer based on a t-test conducted. Citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing or HLB) detection algorithms were developed using aerial hyperspectral imageries. Different hyperspectral image processing algorithms were used such as image-derived spectral library, mixture tuned match filtering (MTMF), spectral angle mapping (SAM), and spectral feature fitting (SFF), and spectral analyst tool in a hyperspectral imaging software (ENVI, ITT VIS). Various vegetation indices and spectral features were calculated using the spectral library and validated against their ideal values using ground measurement. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to extract the significant bands at which the healthy and HLB infected pixels could be separated. ANOVA was further carried out to extract significant bands which would separate the false positives from the truly infected pixels. Since verification and validation of result required more accurate ground truth information, a tree based visual check approach was adopted instead of a pixel based approach for better interpretation of the results. Research Projects reported from Missouri: Crop reflectance sensing to guide corn nitrogen application: A project has been initiated to assess the ability of optical sensors to determine the most profitable N rates in corn. Sensor-based variable-rate N fertilizer application generated an increase in returns ranging from $5 to $50 per acre, depending on soil type. Also, as fertilizer cost increased relative to the price of corn grain, the economic value of using canopy sensors for N management improved. The results of this study are being used to develop procedures and decision rules that can be used with commercial computer-controlled machines that apply variable N rates. Near-infrared reflectance estimates of key soil profile properties: Few studies have been conducted to apply optical reflectance sensing of surface soils in the visible and near infrared (NIR) wavelength bands of soil profile. A laboratory visible-NIR reflectance measurement was obtained for surface and profile soil samples from five Midwestern states, and analyzed to find relationship with the soil physical and chemical properties. Good results were obtained for soil carbon, clay, cation exchange capacity, and calcium. The study identified appropriate spectral ranges and calibration techniques to improve accuracy. Estimating topsoil depth using apparent electrical conductivity: Three commercial EC sensors were used on two fields in Missouri. The EC data was used to investigate relationship with topsoil depth using two different methods, one using statistical analysis and another one using calculations based on the theoretical response functions of the sensors. It was found that topsoil depth estimates by two methods were very similar and that the EC sensors with medium measurement depths gave the best results. It was also found that better estimates could be obtained when combining data from multiple sensors. Crop sensing to estimate mid-season nitrogen need for cotton: High N application in cotton could result in increased cost in pesticides, growth regulator, and defoliant, as well as environmental problems through leaching and runoff of N-rich water. Reflectance sensors were used to diagnose N needs immediately and translate the diagnosis into a real-time, variable-rate application of N. Nitrogen rate experiments were conducted in Missouri for two years on various soils to develop recommendations based on reflectance measurements to support variable-rate fertilization. Sensors gave good predictions of optimal N rate, suggesting that variable-rate N applications to cotton based on real-time reflectance measurements are feasible. Research Projects reported from Nebraska: Crop Canopy Sensors: Results from canopy sensor studies in 2009 indicated that the chlorophyll index (CI) based on canopy reflectance in visible and near-infrared wavelengths ((NIR/VIS)-1) was highly correlated with crop canopy height, and both have similar ability to detect crop N status in the absence of other sources of stress. Crop canopy reflectance and canopy height were also significantly influenced by previous crop, with uniformly greater values for corn following soybean than for corn following corn. Additional studies in 2009 evaluated two canopy sensor threshold values for controlling N fertilizer applications. These thresholds limit N application rates when crop canopy reflectance drops to certain limits, at which canopy density or crop color is low enough that further N application will not increase yield potential  ie with planter gaps, eroded areas, etc. Soil Sensors: The integration of multiple spatial data layers to define targeted sampling sites and delineate potential areas for differentiated management was pursued. An objective function to make comprehensive comparison among different sets of targeted sampling sites was developed. A set of equations to conduct spatial clustering using the likelihood function were derived. New projects were initiated to optimize use of irrigation water and variable rate liming. For the optimized water use project, thematic soil maps have been used to develop a wireless network providing real-time capability to monitor spatially variable water needs in an experimental site. For a variable rate liming project, several Nebraska sites have been mapped and treatments comparing various liming strategies have been developed. Various Projects in North Dakota: Use of site-specific technologies, tools, and management continue to increase in North Dakota. Extension The participants conducted extension workshops on GIS, field demonstration of advanced sensors, developed fact sheets, podcast, and radio talks, newsletters, and the use of software tools for nutrient management and yield data manipulation. NCERA-180 participants continued to work toward the development of an eXtension web site on site-specific management.

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