Precision Agriculture Systems impact on zone management, soil health and surface water management.
Summary of Project Aims (project summary) This project will address a range of soil health, water management and zone management issues associated with emerging precision agriculture and tramlinning farming systems. More specifically, the project will consider a range of biophysical and chemical soil changes occurring under tramline farming systems with full, burnt, raked and knocked down [heavily grazed] stubble retentions. It also aims to better quantify issues associated with surface water management within straight line farming systems.

Key Activities of Project

• Quantification of surface water run off issues associated with down hill farming then compared to more ‘conventional’ contour farming systems;
measured through sunken ‘water traps’; 20 all up
• Build on two other NLP funded projects: Liebe Tramlinning project and the RAIN soil health project
• Expand partnerships within the Grower Group Alliance and foster better linkages between industry and Regional NRM Groups
• Use communication technology to demonstrate and extend research findings
• Hold field days promoting PA looking at key management issues for water management and soil health under tramlinning systems
• Write articles for the local paper, Ag memo and Countryman/Farm Weekly
• Quantification of the benefits of minimum soil disturbance and more effective stubble retention resulting though the adoption of row cropping technologies

May 2006

The water traps used to catch runoff. This one is on a Burnt plot	Seeding the full stubble retention plot next door to a burnt plot
ML1 Data Logger to measure rainfall intensity & site rain gauge	The contour bank we pushed in to measure runoff under a steeper tramlining angle
Looking at a raked plot prior to seeding	The pump used to drain the buried chemical drums

An example of the data coming out of the traps