Precision farming and the need for innovative crop management assurance monitoring tools to improve Philippine agricultural productivity

Precision farming (PF) involves the performance of critical crop production operations and the applications of the right amounts of input at the right time and place relative to individual plants. The inability to perform PF results in crop yield variability. Yield variability across the landscape complicates attempts to improve agricultural productivity (AP) under Philippine conditions. Factors that exacerbate improvement in AP include failure to implement quality assurance measures on basic crop production operations like seeding and fertilizer applications; absence of a rapid topographic profiler; and the lack of diagnostic tools that looks at plant health not only at the entire production field, but at the same time provides the farmer with the ability to look at every square area of his farm. Variability in soil physical/chemical properties across the landscape impacts plant interaction with incoming Photosynthetically-Active Radiation (PAR). Hence, monitoring of Crop-PAR interactions can serve as a diagnostic protocol to pinpoint which area in the production needs to be examined for productivity degrading factors. Consequently, appropriate mitigating measures can be implemented before crop yield is adversely affected. Crop-PAR interactions can be picked-up by a charge couple device commonly found in digital cameras. The authors used an aerial vehicle to obtain a whole view of the production field and recorded Crop-PAR interactions using a digital camera. Three corn fields were documented and the resulting images were processed to separate spectral bands. Vegetation indices were computed for correlation with yield at the end of the cropping season. Rapid landscape profiles were also generated using a survey-grade Global Positioning System receiver mounted on a tractor. Innovative PF diagnostic tools for monitoring crop management are necessary for the Philippines to overcome challenges to crop productivity improvement.