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SECTION 10 SPRAY APPLICATION This section brought to you in association with
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Help prevent spray drift with new crop mapping technology: SataCrop
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n June 2019, Cotton Australia announced a partnership with PCT Agcloud to develop SataCrop. SataCrop is an Australia-wide crop mapping tool to inform everyone on the location of crops sensitive to off target spray drift. Cotton Australia chose to partner with SataCrop after a very successful trial during the 2018–19 season, using the system in the Emerald region of Queensland’s central Highlands. In certain conditions, spray droplets can travel beyond 20 kilometres. Being aware and managing spray drift is highly important particularly where sensitive crops are nearby. SataCrop provides a very quick and easy to use tool for applicators to see what crops are in the surrounding areas as well as live weather data to better plan their spraying activity. Having an accurate crop type map for a particular region can also provide many other uses for farm planning and assessment useful for farmers, farm managers and operators. SataCrop builds on the Satamap technology which became part of the PCT Agcloud business in early 2018. Satamap provide deeper crop health assessment through satellite imagery services and is still available for those wanting to monitor their crop health during the season and double
check those sensitive areas which may have been missed in mapping. SataCrop breaks new ground with crop mapping with a list of new features including: • Maps all crops – not just cotton; • Field boundaries remain in the system, so users can easily add a new season; • Growers can see a handy farm map with field names and area; • Fields can be linked to two other people; • Bureau of Meteorology weather data is live on the map for the previous 72 hours; • You can submit your existing farm boundaries. PCT Agcloud boundaries and boundaries from other providers (e.g. John Deere, Trimble, Agworld) via PCT Agcloud can easily be loaded; • You can use the John Deere Cotton Harvest Identification (HID) file editing tool to edit and correct your Cotton HID files before sending to the gin; • It has a GPS locator so you can walk the field and locate using a mobile device; • It has a search and sort field list; • It is mobile friendly; and, • Area and distance measuring tools are provided.
Screenshot of a SataCrop public image from Emerald. 134 — COTTON YEARBOOK 2019
