A sunflower crop south-west of Toowoomba could be the first in the world planted solely by a drone. The crop, in full bloom at Cambooya, was planted in September as a result of 12 different experiments.
Drone pilot and farmer Roger Woods said drones will be the way of the future.
“To our knowledge, it’s the first sunflower crop in the world entirely planted by a big agricultural drone that we use commercially,” he said. “It spreads the seeds and then that drone subsequently fertilised and kept the crop healthy. The only thing it doesn’t do is harvest it.”
Mr Woods’ drone company regularly plants and fertilises crops such as lucerne, wheat and barley.
But he said friends and colleagues from the farming community thought sunflowers couldn’t be done.
Trial and error
Mr Woods said there were some challenges that had to be overcome by drone planting.
“Sunflowers need to have fairly consistent spacing to grow correctly and they also normally get incorporated quite accurately,” he said.
The drone spread 45,000 seeds per hectare with the aim for 30,000 plants to germinate per hectare.
“We probably didn’t quite get that in a lot of areas, so we can probably drop that rate a little bit in the future,” he said. “I’ve also got some ideas on heights, spin speed, patterning and just to tidy up what we’ve learnt across the 12 experiments here.”
Mr Woods believed the technique impacted less on the land.
“Anytime you don’t have to drive over the surface, you’re doing the land a favour: not making compaction, not disturbing the soil. Certainly drones are a touch-free way to apply things to agricultural surfaces,” he said. “For smaller farmers, being able to plant crops from a drone might be economically a better idea than getting equipment in.”
Sunflowers turning heads
Farm business manager Pandora Bevan said the sunflower fields are open to the public.
“Typically, with private properties where sunflowers are planted the farmers don’t want the public walking through and treading over everything because of biosecurity reasons. We’ve sort of put that aside here,’ she said.
Dozens of visitors have already come to see the spectacle.
“In the past we’ve seen so many locals and tourists driving around Toowoomba and the Darling Downs area looking at the sunflowers, but typically they are planted on the side of highways which means people are parking in dangerous situations or trespassing onto farmer’s private property,” Ms Bevan said.
Mr Woods said he hopes it will also teach the public about new farming innovations.
“It’s been a dual purpose of satisfying that want people have to be up close and personal with sunflowers, and also educate them about new techniques of farming that are much less harsh on the environment than older techniques.”
Source: ABC News