Phantom flies for Suffolk farm winner

Suffolk farmer, Robert Wright, was the winner of the fabulous prize Phantom 4 drone, at this year’s Syngenta Cereals 2017 competition.
Robert received his prize from Syngenta Area Manager, David Wilson, along with an instructional flight and demonstration of the innovative Drone Deploy crop interpretation software with Syngenta New Farming Technologies Lead, Jamie Marshall-Roberts.
They have already put the drone’s capability to good use, assessing the emergence and establishment of an oilseed rape variety trial on Robert’s farm at Barnby, near Beecles.
Jamie Marshall-Roberts (above, centre with Robert and his nephew, James) highlighted that drone imagery can give a new insight into how crops are performing, and gives the opportunity to make proactive decisions to adjust inputs that can assure greater output and efficiency across the field.
“Even with relatively low investment in a drone growers can get a better picture of what’s happening in-season,” he enthused.
“If you add powerful image processing capability that can interpret the information, you make a huge step into precision farming.
“Picking up variation within the crop opens the potential for managing the field more efficiently, to get the best out of every available plant from nutrition or crop inputs,” Jamie pointed out.