Live crop monitoring trials launch at Fife farm
David Aglen, farms manager at Balbirnie Home Farms.
A Fife farm manager will amend crop nutrition in response to live crop monitoring as part of his involvement in an arable trials project.
David Aglen, farms manager at Balbirnie Home Farms near Freuchie, is taking part in the three-year Strategic Cereal Farm project with levy body, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).
The first year’s trial will look at whether amending crop nutrition in response to live crop monitoring – using a measure known as the Brix value – will have an economic benefit on crop health, yield and grain quality.
Baselining and plant health are the focus for the first year of AHDB’s Strategic Cereal Farm Scotland programme, with a series of on farm demonstrations looking at soil and plant health, pests, pollinators and natural enemies. Funded by AHDB, the project bring cutting-edge research, new innovations and practical farming together with the aim of making farming more economically and environmentally resilient. The six-year programme will host a structured combination of short and long-term field and farm-scale trials and demonstrations. David Aglen, farms manager at Balbirnie Home Farms, Freuchie, Fife, is the host of the Scotland strategic farm and is working with SRUC and ADAS to run the programme of activity. He said: “We are well underway with our baselining work looking at soil and plant health, along with pests, pollinators and natural enemies across the farm. We have also recently started our first trial focused on plant nutrition.