Study, development and application of precision agriculture techniques in agricultural machinery

Abstract

Precision agriculture applied to machinery is today one of the most important working fields regarding agriculture innovations. These tools are meant to be a propeller of the future of farming, well needed in order to face the challenges of modern society, a global increasing food demand while providing a sustainable management of natural resources. Available technology on this field covers a wide range of possibilities. During the last 10 years, together with the expansion of electronics and digitalization, the offer of products and technics have become quite rich and it generates, in some cases, difficulties to farmers in order to choose the more adequate solution to their production scenarios. For this reason, this doctoral thesis will focus on the study, develop and validation of two of the most important disciplines in precision agriculture: GNSS guidance and site-specific application. Today’s most important and extended technology in precision agriculture is the use of GNSS guidance systems. Those systems allow the vehicle to be driven automatically, by taken control of guidance interface, resulting in important reductions of the overlap between parallel passes. This reduction impacts directly the time invested on the task, but also all the inputs used. However, the maximum precision reached will depend on the GNSS technology used, as a combination of the receiver installed on the vehicle and the external signals used to enhance the calculations. How to evaluate and classify the technology used to improve GNSS positioning and recommendations on the specific use of them in determinate agriculture applications will be the scope of this thesis. A second field of work is focussed in one of the most promising technologies within precision farming, site specific application. This doctoral thesis has developed a procedure to achieve the characterization of soil properties along and across the profile, allowing a variable tillage. This results not only on important saves during the task but also on better and sustainable soil management. Site specific application of herbicide has been as well part of studies, where significant saves on chemicals were achieved thanks to the assessment and development of a combined, chemical and mechanical, weed control implement commanded by a RTK-GNSS system.