When to spray crops against diseases
Crop protection with a management system requires a lot of information and quality data. With RMA disease management, the high-quality agricultural weather stations in the field provide the local data. The information comes from models that calculate whether and when the conditions for infecting a crop by fungal diseases are favorable. The models have been developed by universities around the world. RMA collects all this data to translate it into intelligent advice for spraying, so that crop protection products are only used when necessary.
Measuring weather data
Disease management starts with the installation of a weather station by RMA, which records climate parameters every 15 minutes. Parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, leaf wetness, radiation, wind direction and speed. An 8-day forecast is also provided based on the location of the weather station.
Disease models
The data from the weather station is sent via 4G to a secure online environment in the Cloud of RMA. The measurement data is used in disease models. Together with the 8-day forecast, the models calculate whether and when the conditions for infecting a crop by fungal diseases are favorable.
Spray recommendation
The RMA dashboard then converts the data into spray recommendations. Simplicity and user-friendliness are key. The recommendations can be viewed on our dashboard 24 hours a day via a computer, tablet or smartphone. RMA ensures that growers can easily work with this.
Spray forecast
The spraying weather indicates when a spraying has the best result and thus contributes to successful crop protection. An accurate weather forecast makes it possible to determine, for example, the best time to spray much more accurately. Local weather conditions such as dew point, precipitation and wind speed are crucial for the best result.
Agronomy support to spray
In order to bring the recommendations on crop protection into practice, RMA provides additional support. Growers can count on RMA to teach them how the life cycle of the fungus works, what the risk is from primary disease inoculum, when the disease can infect the crop, what the effects and targets are of the different crop protection products and why the models produce certain output. That is necessary to understand the outcome of the system, so that the right crop protection product is used at the right time.