Decipher Provides Growers With The Data and Tools to Optimise Yields
Decipher is a world-class biomass mapping tool that uses satellite images, geospatial data and global-scale processing to bring you reliable vegetation analysis in seconds all in the palm of your hand.
Decipher and Western AG have teamed up to provide both our agronomy team and growers with this scouting tool, free of charge. Decipher’s world-class satellite imagery provides up to 10m of high definition normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), to help visualise what’s happening on a paddock/farm. Pests, diseases, weed and nutritional issues can be picked up well before the naked eye can. For example, through the satellite imagery, agronomists have picked up slug damage in canola in the HRZ as well as Lucerne flee damage and ryegrass blow-outs in cereal crops up in the North. In simple terms, this technology helps agronomists and growers make more informed management decisions leading to maximised crop yield and ROI.
Photo 1. Decipher NDVI image taken in a canola crop September 2019 showing high ryegrass/grass activity indicated by the yellow/red areas
Grower’s shape-files contained on Agworld can be easily uploaded onto the Decipher platform. Then, when users log in, producers can quickly identify paddock boundaries for their whole farm. This technology could also have various management fits such as when cutting frosted crops or severe ryegrass infestations for hay, maintaining watch on insect pressure in problematic areas and comparing different soil types are affecting yield results from season to season. Biomass imagery can allow comparisons to like-to-like performance across months / years with peak imagery and monitor trends and changes month on month in an easy to read graph. With regular imagery available, sometimes daily, accurate and timely data is available for supporting everyday management decisions.
Decipher also provides a great tool when undertaking on-farm trials such as N-rich strips, trace element trials or side by side cultivar trials. These trials can be verified with bio-mass imagery on Decipher as well. There is nothing like “ground truthing” and/or yield data, but the Decipher platform allows for a quick, easy and early in-season reference which is a valuable tool.
In the not too distant future, Decipher will be able export maps into your machinery for variable rate applications. Western AG are currently doing VR applications on various controllers with great success through the PCT AgCloud platform.
Please contact a Western AG agronomist if you would like to know more about our technology programs and would like to start using the Decipher platform.
Article produced by - Nick Zordan, Western AG Horsham