Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW MAY/JUNE 2020 17 TECHNOLOGY Stephanie Cornwall speaks to the creators of a new grower tool seeking to turn often under-used data into valuable insights and forecasting that can be used to increase yields and minimise crop waste. W hile many growers gather data about their crops from season to season, too many are not using the knowledge they can gain from this to its best advantage, it has been claimed. Providing potato crop insight from the ground up should be the key aim of all data collected on farms, according to well-known agronomist Paul Coleman, who has worked in the potato sector for 36 years and spent 23 years at Greenvale. Paul moved across to Greenvale’s parent company, the Product Investments Group, in January and, alongside Greenvale’s former ResearchManager Dr Robert Allen N.Sch, is endeavouring to provide potato insight and forecasting that will help all agronomists and professional potato growers be more e cient. e two have teamed up to create and market Crop4Sight, a grower-friendly new software solution providing in-season crop benchmarking. e platform, comprising an integrated mobile and web application, was demonstrated to Potato Review by Paul, who is now Crop4Sight’s Managing Director, and Robert, its Technical Director. “We set out with key principals that when a grower records a piece of data about his potato crop, he must get something back from this. For every piece of data recorded, there should be some insight or forecast,” said ‘Use it, don’t lose it’ “Having live crop data compared to bespoke benchmarks allowed me to have objective discussions with my growers about their crops.” Fiona Law-Eadie, Agronomist Too few growers aren’t using their past experiences to fully gauge the potential of their future crops. ➜