Harvest technologies include sensors and other components installed on harvest equipment to measure crop mass flow and provide spatial yield estimates within the field. Grain and cotton yield monitors are commonly utilized harvest technologies in row-crop production. Yield maps provide valuable information regarding spatial yield variability within the fields and how crop management decisions can be adjusted in the following year to maximize productivity across the whole field. Proper setup, calibration and utilization of harvest technologies is important to collect quality yield data.
Our work on harvest technologies mainly focuses on understanding different yield monitoring and mapping errors that occurs during harvest and assessing the accuracy of yield data.
The projects that are currently underway in this area are:
- Using onboard module weighing system on new cotton harvest machinery (CP 690/770) to improve accuracy of yield estimates and mapping
- Influence of different crop and machine factors including variety and harvest speed on yield mapping accuracy and harvest loss
- Evaluating the potential of computer vision and artificial intelligecne to estimate harvest loss in cotton and peanut