Advanced technologies for efficient crop management: A participatory approach with application at farm scale

气候变化、产量变化和资源限制正在挑战英国农业和全球粮食安全。我们的目标是提高英国两种重要作物——小麦和土豆的可持续和高效生产。我们将与农民和最终用户合作，应用和部署新型作物传感和诊断技术。我们将开发一种工具，可以预测和诊断作物对水和养分相关限制的反应。反过来，这些知识将指导作物管理，并帮助整个耕地供应链的利益相关者了解土地管理的最佳方法，以实现更可持续和高效的生产，利用精准农业。我们将测试遥感技术，并将它们与分析作物和土壤过程的方法结合起来。我们将在农场的固定塔和无人机（UAV）上部署传感器，并将这些传感器与全球覆盖的卫星传感器进行比较。我们将评估叶片温度、荧光和反射率的变化是否与产量减少有关，将传感器数据与植物生长、产量和生态生理以及植物和土壤温度和湿度的现场测量数据进行比较。我们将了解如何以及在什么情况下，传感器和平台可以用来确定和诊断作物产量限制。与模拟过程建模的联系将提供一套丰富的与植物-土壤系统有关的诊断，并预测其对管理变化的敏感性。数据同化方法将允许基于现场观测和传感器输出的模型更新和改进，以产生更可靠、接近实时和强大的分析。我们的技术将支持作物诊断系统，显示作物水分和营养状况，量化产量减少，可用于分田到农场规模，具有明确的量化可靠性。与农民合作，我们的技术将结合起来，产生一个决策支持工具，具有(i)即时（近实时）绘制作物胁迫及其对作物产量的可能影响的地图和（ii）提供最佳管理干预措施的详细空间信息，以支持可持续高产的决策制定。这项工作直接解决了英国研究委员会的一个优先事项，即通过高质量和实用的研究来支持英国农业，以支持在气候变化和竞争日益激烈的全球市场背景下作物生产的持续高回报。我们的成果将为农民提供先进的诊断，并指导具有成本效益的水和养分管理策略，以实现持续产量。

Changing climate, variable yields, and resource constraints are challenging UK agriculture and global food security. Our goal is to enhance sustainable and efficient production for two crops of major importance in the UK, wheat and potatoes. We will work with farmers and end users in the application and deployment of novel crop sensing and diagnostic technologies. We will develop a tool that can predict and diagnose crop response to water and nutrient related limits. In turn, this knowledge will guide crop management and help to inform stakeholders from across the arable supply chain about the best approaches for land management towards more sustainable and efficient production, using precision agriculture. We will test remote sensing technologies and couple them with methods for analysing crop and soil processes. We will deploy sensors at farm sites on fixed towers and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and compare these against satellite sensors with global coverage. We will evaluate whether changes in leaf temperature, fluorescence and reflectance are related to yield reductions, comparing sensor data against field measurements of plant growth, yield and ecophysiology, and plant and soil temperature and moisture. We will understand how, and under what circumstances, sensors and platforms can be employed to determine and diagnose crop yield limits. Links to simulation process modelling will provide a rich set of diagnostics related to the plant-soil system, and forecast its sensitivity to management changes. Data assimilation approaches will allow model updates and improvements based on field observations and sensor output, to generate more reliable, near real-time and robust analyses. Our technologies will underpin a crop diagnostic system, indicating crop water and nutrient status, quantifying reductions to yield, that can be used at sub-field to farm scale, with a clear quantification of reliability. Working with farmers, our technologies will be combined to generate a decision support tool, with capacity for (i) immediate (near-real time) mapping of crop stress, and its likely impact on crop yield and (ii) providing detailed spatial information on optimal management interventions to support decision making for sustainable high yield. This work directly addresses a priority of the UK research councils to support UK farming with high quality and practical research to support consistent high returns from crop production against a background of changing climate and increasingly competitive global markets. Our deliverables will provide advanced diagnostics for farmers, and guide cost effective strategies for water and nutrient management for consistent yield.