The new Contour Soil-Based Seed Planning tool is now available, adding further precision and control to seed planning in addition to all the features in Whole Field Seed Planning.

Agronomists and Crop Input Specialists can now quickly build a single plan for each farm that includes all crops, using soil data, observations and more to vary seed rates across zones. The resulting visual report showing seed rate maps, rules, and seed totals by variety lends itself to being shared and discussed with the grower – helping showcase your expertise.

Here’s how:

• Soil-Based Seed Planning can be accessed for subscribed accounts from the Contour Seed Homepage, replacing and enhancing the legacy Toolbox process with far greater flexibility and accuracy
• Base rates for the plan can be set by crop, variety or field, enabling you to factor in variations in plant establishment such as fields that typically underperform

• Add rules to increase or decrease seed applied across zones based on specific soil conditions including texture, drainage, stone content and more
• When adding rules, the appropriate soil map displays to provide context. For example, when setting a rule based on clay %, the distribution of clay across selected fields will be shown
• Any number of rules can be applied to refine the precision of seed distribution, and you can immediately see the impact of each rule on the seed plan across fields or zones
• Exceptions allow you to set conditions that override other rules, so that if the condition is met, a specific rate will always be applied regardless of any other rules. For example, you might want to apply a rule that says where clay content is higher, increase the base rate. However if sand content is high, override that rule to apply a different amount of seed

• Observation-based rules enable you to factor in issues and problem areas identified when scouting, such increasing seed rate where blackgrass has been observed
• In addition, you can draw new polygons within seed planning and specify rules to be applied to them, perfect for headlands

• Once all rules have been added, you can view total seed required per variety and review the seed map to check rates by field and polygon.
• Seed rates for each area can be tweaked with flexibility to edit the map and manually adjust rates – ideal when discussing with the grower
• Bulk adjustments enable you to round total seed required up or down, applying changes to all or specific fields
• Plans can be exported as job sheets, shapefiles, or in GPS format – and with one plan covering all crops for a farm, that’s one file too!
• To avoid wait time, you can navigate away from the plan while GPS files are generating and access later from the seed homepage

Why wait – get started building plans now for Harvest 2024 to support your growers with the best varieties, dressings and optimal seed rate tailored to their farm, and be on the front foot in converting seed sales.

Log in to Contour to check out the updates today, and please send any feedback you may have to info@digital.originenterprises.com to help us improve.