POTATO PRODUCTION WITH iMETOS DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

With the use of iMETOS DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS you can monitor all relevant weather conditions and soil parameters and take your agricultural work efficiency to a higher level.
Combine monitored and forecasted information to create powerful actionable tools, which will help you optimize your production and produce more potatoes with less.

With the help of climatic and soil monitoring and forecasting you can:

• WEATHER MONITORING: Monitor weather conditions in your fields to know the near real-time wind speed and direction for spraying, and to avoid diseases due to high humidity, leaf wetness and heavy rains.
• FERTILITY MANAGEMENT: Optimize fertilization time and amounts. Knowing the amount of soil moisture and precipitation can help fine tune the management plan – don’t under or over fertilize, based on the actual and forecasted amounts of moisture.
• PLANT PROTECTION MANAGEMENT: With the use of decision support models for disease management of potatoes and a spray forecast window you can optimize the timing of your plant protection activities. This will preserve yields and limit secondary infections by timing the sprays based on the disease pressure throughout the growing season. Also, if spraying is followed immediately by a rainfall of 20 -30 mm, there is a good chance that the treatment will be washed off, and a potential reapplication is required with contact fungicides. This is why the spray forecast decision support window is a valuable tool for efficient management.
• IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT: Monitor your site-specific soil moisture levels, in real-time, to know when your potato crop is suffering water stress in the root zone and apply the right amount of water to avoid reduced yields and quality losses. For example: over-watering increases risk of disease and under-watering often leads to irregular tubers with numerous imperfections.
• WORK MANAGEMENT: Monitor weather conditions on your fields and use the hyper localized weather forecast to know where you can send your field management staff.
  For example: When you want to send a sprayer to a distant field, check on FieldClimate.com or on the mobile app, if the wind speed and direction is appropriate for spraying.

Potato Late Blight caused by Phytophtora infestans is one of the most devastating plant diseases. It is one of the most important diseases and therefore numerous model types are available in FieldClimate. Although Fieldclimate.com is supporting multiple models for late blight prediction, we recommend the use of 3 models for this disease (prediction of the first spray, Infection prediction model and the NoBlight model).
The NoBlight model is used to define spraying with preventative fungicides. The graph on the right shows the increase of Severity values on the 23nd of May because of favorable conditions for P. infestans (relative humidity more than 90%, temperature between 10 and 15°C, and precipitation – see table for calculation of severity values). The value was 4 within half a day and therefore the spray interval was recommended for 7 days.
In FieldClimate.com the infections of the three severity classes – Susceptible, Moderate and Resistent potato varieties – are displayed by an infection curve. When 100% infection has been reached the conditions for P. infestans are optimal. In this example we see good conditions for infections of susceptible varieties at the beginning of May, but for moderate and resistant varieties they would not have been infected because hours of high relative humidity have been too short.

Click on the graph for a larger picture.

With our new CropVIEW camera device you can have a remote view of your potato field, directly from your computer or phone, and see at any time how your crop is growing and developing.

This is just a glance at solutions that iMETOS DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM can bring to you and help you to take control of your potato field.