AN INNOVATIVE FRAMEWORK TO IMPLEMENT PRECISION TECHNOLOGIES

PRECISION TECHNOLOGIES OFFER great potential to increase on-farm productivity and profitability. This potential is unlikely to be fully achieved, however, without a systematic monitoring and control of the most important productivity constraints. This paper reports on a novel tool developed to provide advisers and sugarcane growers with a framework to manage these limiting factors, such as sugar loss, compaction, etc. Also, the tool will assist the decision making process to implement monitoring technologies. It is based on the systematic and proven Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system, developed to ensure food safety in the food industry, and adapted for the sugar industry from a production viewpoint. The proposed framework is an innovative approach aiming to assist advisers and growers to identify the key constraints to their production system, the technologies available to monitor them and determine if corrective measures are needed. The framework has been incorporated into a smartphone application that can be adapted to suit different farm characteristics and will take the users through a six-step process: i) identification of the problem/constraint, ii) determine the stage(s) at which the problems are likely to occur, iii) establish conditions or a range of critical limits where the constraints pose no threat to profitability, iv) establish a monitoring system that can detect compliance with the critical limits, v) establish corrective actions when the limits are not met and vi) establish documentation and record keeping. Previous work on the framework identified harvest, water availability, soil health and weeds, pests, diseases as the most significant productivity constraints for the sugarcane industry. These constraints are the initial focus of the study and a case study from the Southern region is presented.