Precision agriculture is information technology applied to machinery, crops and livestock. The tools of precision agriculture–geographic information systems, global positioning systems, remote sensing, variable rate technology and others–offer an opportunity to better understand the variability in yield and quality that exists in sugarbeet fields.

Uneven plant spacing contributes to an uneven size of beet harvested.

A better understanding of spatial variability and its likely cause can provide opportunities to improve the production system. Andreas Smyrillis, an MS-ATM graduate student from Cyprus recently completed a study of precision seeding of sugarbeets. A key question in his work was "does crop quality respond to precision planting"? Current cultural practices allow Michigan sugarbeet growers to obtain plant stands of 40% to 60% of the seeding rate. Beet plants fail to emerge and thrive for many reasons: a percentage of seeds die before planting, some seeds germinate but fail to emerge, others emerge yet die of disease, insect and other damage. In Michigan, preliminary trials indicated use of precision seeders would increase plant stand, improve uniformity of seed spacing, provide a smaller, more uniform beet size with a higher sugar content and increase yield compared to general purpose planters. An evaluation of the plant-to-stand field performance of two general purpose planters (Monosem and John Deere) and two specialized sugar beet planters (Accord and Stanhay) was conducted in two locations in 2000 and one location in 2001 at the Saginaw Valley Bean and Beet Research Farm. A pelleted and a fasonated seed treatment were evaluated at two planting speeds (3 and 4.5 mph). Key measures of planter performance were rate of seedling emergence, final plant population, seed spacing uniformity, beet size uniformity and the standard measures of sugar beet yield and quality.

Precision seeder used in the sugarbeet study.

The precision planters provided the best plant spacing uniformity while the general purpose planters tended to provide the highest final plant stand. The 3 mph forward travel speed generally provided a more uniform plant spacing. When travel speed was held constant there was little difference in plant spacing uniformity between the pelleted and fasonated seed treatments. There was a positive correlation between plant spacing uniformity and beet size uniformity, but further work is needed to better quantify the cause-and-effect relationship. There were no consistent differences in beet root yield, sugar percentage or clear juice purity among treatments.

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