Bayer: strong harvest results with Seed Advisor
The Climate Corporation, a Bayer subsidiary, reports strong harvest result for farmers using Seed Advisor.
Seed Advisor is The Climate Corporation’s (Climate) new predictive seed selection and placement technology for corn. It was Announced in the United States in August 2018.
Seed Advisor empowers seed dealers with a predictive model that combines Bayer’s seed genetics library with regional seed performance data to help predict the best performing hybrids for each of a farmer’s fields.
Seed Advisor field-tested acriss 100,00 con acres
As part of Climate’s process for bringing new digital solutions to market, the tool was field tested by a group of farmers and their dealers through the company’s FieldView Innovators program across 100,000 U.S. corn acres in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota during the 2018 growing season. According to Climate, harvest results demonstrated an average yield advantage of 9.1 bushels per acre versus what the farmer would have planted without Seed Advisor recommendations, with a more than 80 percent win rate.
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“It’s a simple tool for farmers who want to see positive results,” said farmer Rick DeGroote of Parkersburg, Iowa. “In 2018, I used Seed Advisor recommendations for 90 percent of my fields, and if my results prove anything, it’s that this technology will be adopted quickly when it’s widely available.”
Manage risk and maximize yield
“Our Seed Advisor results show that by applying advanced machine learning techniques to our seed genetics library and expansive field testing, we can help farmers make better decisions about the best hybrids to plant in their fields, ultimately helping them manage risk and maximize yield,” said Mike Stern, Chief Executive Officer for The Climate Corporation and Head of Digital Farming at Bayer.
“We have entered the next phase of digital farming, and predictive seed selection and placement is only the beginning. From crop protection to fertility opportunities, we are expanding our research to strengthen the data science models that power our tools, and quickly advancing projects through our R&D pipeline to deliver digital agriculture innovations to more farmers around the world,” said Stern.
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With @Bayer4Crops, we accelerated 25 innovation advancements in 2018 to provide farmers more #data driven insights to sustainably improve their productivity https://t.co/9ftsV2Le7o pic.twitter.com/jG4IgxPRa5
— Climate Corporation (@climatecorp) 8 January 2019
Climate R&D innovation in 2019
In addition to expanding the pre-commercial test of Seed Advisor in 2019 to more farmers in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, Climate is also growing its seed selection and placement research to include Wisconsin, Indiana and Missouri. Predictive seed research is also underway in soybeans. An official launch of Seed Advisor is targeted for fall 2019 in the U.S., pending harvest results.
Disease Risk & Disease Identification: Climate is driving towards an integrated, data-driven solution to help farmers protect their crops before yield is impacted. Climate’s disease identification research has added 15 corn and soybean diseases to its portfolio and is expanding into wheat, cotton and specialty crops. Climate has also made significant progress in predicting disease risk in fields before emergence through its advanced disease risk model. Built on 3 years of in-field observations, the model forecasted the occurrence of disease more than 80 percent of the time in 2018, and can differentiate mild, moderate, and severe outcomes. Climate’s disease risk model is also helping farmers identify fields that have the highest likelihood of positive return on investment for an application of fungicide. Expanded field testing with farmers for disease identification and disease risk is planned for the 2019 growing season.
Fertility Scripting: With fertility prescriptions in FieldView, farmers and their agronomic partners can work together to sustainably optimize productivity through improved timing and rates of nutrient inputs. By capturing key processes that impact nitrogen levels in the field, Climate is currently testing and validating models that identify areas that would benefit from variable rate nitrogen applications. The company is continuing to invest globally to expand research on fertility prescriptions for additional crops, including soybeans, canola and wheat in parts of the U.S., Brazil and Argentina.
Also read: Climate Corporation partners with CNH and DroneDeploy
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