Arable

Combinable crops and root crops, flown in stages across a long season.

Winter wheat and barley

The long season, flown in stages

Establishment gaps, patchy weed pressure, septoria risk and a nitrogen plan that has to follow the field, not a flat rate.

The challenge. A cereal crop is in the ground for the better part of a year and every problem in it is patchy. Blackgrass concentrates along the tramlines and headlands. Septoria starts in the thickest, wettest part of the canopy. The nitrogen plan gets split three ways and applied flat because there is no map that says otherwise. Each of those is a decision made blind, repeated across every field on the farm.

The approach. A base map at establishment, then a fortnightly multispectral cadence through the stem extension and flag leaf windows, tightening when the weather turns favourable for septoria. Weed scans land before each herbicide window and produce a prescription your sprayer can load. Nitrogen splits are prescribed from measured biomass rather than a target applied evenly.

Capabilities: disease, fertilisation, weed control, yield, compaction, field mapping.

Outcomes. Treated area recorded against total area for every herbicide pass. Nitrogen prescribed per zone with the measured shortfall behind it. Disease flags dated and located, days before a cab-level diagnosis. A yield estimate that narrows through grain fill instead of arriving at harvest.

Scale. Blocks of 10 to 120 hectares, flown as one route.

Maize

Early weeks decide it, and birds finish it

Establishment counts, early weed competition, corn borer pressure and flocks working the cobs at ripening.

The challenge. Maize forgives nothing in the first six weeks. A gappy stand cannot be fixed later, and weeds that get away before the canopy closes take yield directly. Then at the other end of the season, once the cobs are filling, flocks move in and a fixed deterrent stops working after a fortnight. Between those two ends the crop is too tall to walk into and too dense to see through.

The approach. A counting flight at the three to five leaf stage sets the establishment number and finds the gaps. Weed scans run before the post-emergence window and produce a spot-spray prescription. Once the crop is over head height, flights are the only practical way to see inside the block, so pest surveillance runs on a fixed cadence. At ripening, camera triggered deterrence responds to flocks rather than running on a timer.

Capabilities: weed control, yield, pest, bird deterrence, fertilisation, network.

Outcomes. Establishment counted rather than estimated from a pacing walk. Weed treatment confined to mapped zones before canopy closure. Pest and bird pressure logged by block and hour across the season. Chopping order set from measured yield, not from the gate view.

Scale. Blocks of 5 to 80 hectares, with deterrence stations on the blocks under pressure.

Oilseed rape

Uneven from the day it goes in

Patchy establishment, flea beetle damage, and a canopy that needs measuring before the nitrogen decision is worth anything.

The challenge. Rape establishes unevenly and then the gaps get worse. Flea beetle damage is concentrated and easy to miss until the affected patch has thinned out entirely. Canopy size drives the whole nitrogen decision, and a canopy that varies threefold across a field makes a flat rate close to meaningless. Deciding whether to keep or redrill a struggling field is one of the more expensive calls of the year, and it is usually made from the gateway.

The approach. Two establishment flights turn keep-or-redrill into a decision with an area behind it. Pest surveillance through the autumn tracks damage patches as they grow or stall. Canopy measurement before the spring nitrogen produces the zoning, with the green area index measured rather than guessed.

Capabilities: pest, fertilisation, disease, yield, assistant.

Outcomes. Keep-or-redrill decided from a measured established area. Damage patches tracked across flights instead of found once. Spring nitrogen zoned to the measured canopy. Desiccation timed by zone rather than by field.

Scale. Blocks of 10 to 100 hectares.

Sugar beet

Where spot spraying pays first

Wide rows and slow early growth make beet the crop where weed mapping and spot treatment save the most.

The challenge. Beet sits in wide rows and grows slowly at first, so bare soil stays exposed for weeks and weeds have an open run at it. The herbicide programme is repeated and expensive, and it is applied across the whole field because the actual weed distribution has never been mapped. Beet is also a heavy crop moved by heavy machines, so the compaction from last year's lifting shows up in this year's stand.

The approach. Weed scans ahead of every pass in the programme, producing a prescription per pass rather than a single map for the season. Compaction analysis reads the crop over the traffic lines your terminals recorded. A base elevation map handles the standing water that beet punishes hardest.

Capabilities: weed control, compaction, field mapping, fertilisation, disease.

Outcomes. A prescription per herbicide pass rather than one blanket rate. Treated area recorded pass by pass across the programme. Compaction located against recorded machine traffic. Standing water areas mapped from the elevation model.

Scale. Blocks of 10 to 80 hectares.

Potatoes

Blight, irrigation and a crop you cannot see

Blight surveillance on a tight cadence, irrigation uniformity from thermal imaging, and a yield estimate before lifting.

The challenge. Potatoes carry two problems at once. Late blight moves fast enough that a few days of delay changes the outcome, and the standard answer is a protective spray programme applied across everything on a calendar. Irrigation is the other: a blocked nozzle or an under-delivering arc runs for weeks while the crop underneath quietly fails, and none of it is visible from the headland.

The approach. Multispectral flights on a short cadence through the blight risk window, always compared against the field's own history rather than an absolute threshold. Thermal flights during the irrigation season locate leaks and dry patches to a coordinate. A counting flight before lifting gives the estimate that the storage and haulage booking depends on.

Capabilities: disease, irrigation, yield, fertilisation, compaction, assistant.

Outcomes. Blight flags dated and located, with the change since the last flight attached. Irrigation anomalies given coordinates instead of a general area. Water applied recorded per irrigated hectare. Storage and haulage booked against a measured estimate.

Scale. Blocks of 5 to 60 hectares, usually irrigated.

Organic farms

Mechanical weeding needs a map more than anyone

Without herbicides, weed location decides where the hoe goes, when, and how many passes the field actually needs.

The challenge. An organic rotation has no rescue treatment, so timing is everything and the tool is mechanical. Hoeing and harrowing are expensive in fuel, time and soil disturbance, and they get run across the whole field because the weed distribution is unknown. Run too early and the weeds return; too late and the crop takes the damage. Meanwhile nutrient supply comes from the rotation and manure, both of which vary across a field far more than a bought fertiliser does.

The approach. Weed mapping ahead of each mechanical pass, which turns a whole-field operation into a targeted one and often removes a pass entirely. Nutrient status is measured rather than assumed, so manure and compost go where the rotation has left a gap. Cover crop establishment is verified by counting rather than by eye.

Capabilities: weed control, seeding, fertilisation, reporting, yield.

Outcomes. Mechanical passes targeted to mapped areas, with passes saved recorded. Manure and compost placed against measured shortfall. Cover crop establishment counted, not assumed. Certification evidence assembled from flight records.

Scale. Blocks of 5 to 100 hectares.