Cambridge University Farm is working on a smartphone app to measure ground cover in potato crops.
"Ground cover is a key input for yield prediction model, irrigation scheduling and blight predictions," Marc Allison, a researcher at the Farm, explained. The current technology for measuring it was tried and tested but cumbersome, he said.
It usually involved carrying a wooden-framed grid into the field and counting the number of squares more than half filled with green leaves. "It works well, with reproducible results."
