Project Update - February 2018

HannahJoy Pheasant

During the past year I conducted three field trials in lettuce and gathered data from five tomato field trials. The three lettuce trials used physical plant markers. Three of the tomato trials had physical markers while two had topical markers. I collected weed density counts before and after cultivation, plant stand counts, time to hand-weed after mechanical cultivation, and marketable yields.

Results from the field trials (Table 1) show significant reductions in both weed densities and manual labor can be achieved with an automated weed control system in comparison to standard cultivation with no change in crop safety.

In July I presented a poster on this project at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers annual meeting in Spokane, WA. I also gave a poster and presentation at the California Weed Science Society annual meeting in Santa Barbara, CA in January 2018.

I obtained an RFID tag and reader but was not able to implement it in field trials because the field trials with the physical plant labels and topical markers were already planned and there was not time to change the plans. Hopefully the next round of field trials will be able to include testing the RFID tags.