March 23, 2012

These days it seems that everyone is coming out with apps for smartphones and tablets. Just recently, CropLife published an article listing its top 10 mobile apps for agriculture. Following is information about some of these apps that you might want to explore for your operation. The rank given by CropLife is indicated in parentheses.

Farm Record Apps

The UNL Aphid Speed Scouting mobile app can help you determine whether treatment or further scouting is needed to ,manage an aphid problem. More UNL Apps UNL Extension has developed several other apps, which are described at IANR Mobile Apps, and has several more ag- based apps in development.

Many of the apps are for keeping farm records. These include Optimizer 2.0 (2), iCropTrak (4), Farm Manager (5), and MyTraps.com (honorable mention). They all take slightly different approaches to handling the information. For example, Optimizer 2.0 is web based and has a free version and a subscription version. With the subscription version, someone will input all of your information for you. Both versions will send you text messages about the status of your crop. On the other hand you have iCropTrak, Farm Manager, and MyTraps.com. These all require you to input your information.

Nutrient Management Apps

Both Nutrient Removal (6) and Precision Earth (7) aid nutrient management. Nutrient Removal gives you a ballpark idea of which nutrients a crop will remove and how much of each nutrient will be removed. Precision Earth keeps track of soil sampling records and requires a GPS chip in your mobile device for it to work properly.

Corn Apps

Two of the apps are strictly for use with corn. At the start of the season, the Corn Planting Calculator (8) is a convenient way to calculate how much seed you will need and the cost per acre for that seed. For those who like to plan the end to the growing season there is YieldCheck (3). By using YieldCheck you can sample 1/1,000th of an acre to estimate your corn yield.

Insect Management App

Aphid Speed Scout is from UNL Extension. CropLife gave it the #1 spot on its list. This app is designed for scouting soybean fields for soybean aphids. Speed scouting is one method for determining whether soybean aphids have reached the treatment threshold of 250 aphids per plant. It relies on the number of "infested" plants rather than estimating the number of aphids on each plant. Plants are considered "infested" if there are 40 or more aphids on the plant. The app can store your scouting history and add reminders to your calendar for treatment or scouting the field again. One of the best parts about this app is that once you download it, you will NOT need Internet access to operate it in the field. 

Wayne Ohnesorg
Extension Educator