How monitoring gadgets guide Strategic Cereal Farm North

Henny Lowth, who manages the Strategic Cereal Farm programme at AHDB, provides an update on the trials at our farm in Yorkshire.

You only need to stand in David Blacker’s field to see and feel the story. It is wet, cold and gloomy, with very little crop growth.

Since David joined the Strategic Cereal Farm programme in 2022, it feels like the current weather has become the norm.

The relentless wet conditions have been the bane of the trials, which cover nutrient use efficiency, clover understories and field drainage. None of these have escaped unscathed, keeping those involved on their toes, forcing us to adapt and, sometimes, compromise plans to keep things on track.

On top of the weather, the clover understory trial had to contend with an unintended herbicide treatment. Miraculously, it was not wiped off the map, but it is small and patchy.

So far, the winter wheat drilled in this field is not showing any major differences in growth between the clover and non-clover areas. Potentially, plant populations are lower in the clover strips, but only by a whisker.

In the nutrient management trial, we are using some Paul-Tech probes to monitor the soil. At present, the results are consistent with what we see and what we know. The soil is wet and swimming in nutrients.

We will need to investigate some of the soil temperature readings, as two probes, about 50 m apart in one of the trial strips, are disagreeing to the tune of approximately 1°C, which does not feel right.

Of course, these probes may prove their worth as the season progresses, especially by highlighting changes to soil nutrient status (via electrical conductivity readings). This will help us estimate how much nutrient has been taken up by the crop (or leached out of the field). In the middle of February, we will take soil samples to provide good estimates of soil mineral nitrogen (SMN).

The winter wheat is in such a sorry state that we may need to re-drill it (or parts of it) with spring barley in the drainage trial.

Members of the University of York are monitoring the abundance and diversity of earthworms on the farm, looking at the impact of management.

In autumn 2024, mole drains were added to two tramlines within the new drainage zone. The intention is to improve lateral movement of water to the pipe drains. There has been a slight reduction in worms in the moled area, which may be due to the disruption associated with moling.

We are also testing basic kit to monitor soil water levels – dipwells. These are simply perforated PVC pipes surrounded by nylon and bashed into the soil, which let the water in but keep the dirt out.

Once again, there have been no surprises from these monitoring devices, which are recording very high water levels across the field. Currently, levels are highest in the undrained area (some are almost filled to the top), but this is not obvious on the surface. There are some anomalies, which could be due to blockages in the pipes’ perforations, rather than a true result.

If you are interested in the finer details, we recently published the annual report for harvest 2024.

The trials will continue for harvest 2025, albeit with some tweaks to the approaches, which are summarised on the farm’s research web page (alongside the reports and a summary of key findings).

If you are not a report-type person, then keep an eye out for details of our summer open day, which will take place at Strategic Cereal Farm North in June this year and demonstrate all the trials and conclusions to date.