Internship experiences Frenk-Jan Baron

For my Bachelor Agrotechnology thesis, I looked at the relationship between soil conductivity and potato yield. I wanted to write my thesis on precision agriculture, because this will make a major step forward in increasing production in the future. Because I wanted something with soil and yield variation, I ended up at Van Den Borne Potatoes. This company makes scans of the soil and also measures the potato yield. Jacob van den Borne had the feeling that the yield differences within a plot can be explained by differences in the soil. To substantiate this presumption, I compared the data from the soil scans with the measured yield.

During soil scanning, the conductivity of the soil is mapped. This can be seen in the left figure, red indicates high conductivity and blue indicates low. The higher the soil conductivity, the more water and nutrients are available for the plant. The yield measurement can be seen on the right. Green is a high yield and red is low. To analyze the parcels, they are divided into five management zones. It can be seen that the spots with high conductivity also have a high yield. There are yield differences between the zones, so these zones are suitable for precision farming.

This internship gave me much more insight into precision agriculture and the applications of the various sensors and techniques. The conversations with Jacob were very inspiring and if you want to learn more about precision farming, this company is definitely recommended!