Federated Agronomists and a good number of growers actively use the Sirrus® app from ProAgrica® to record and store field information. The free app offers excellent recordkeeping capabilities, putting all field information in one easy-to-retrieve location, but the premium Sirrus app provides imaging capabilities that take field tracking to the next level.

“With the Sirrus upgrade you can get access to NDVI imagery,” said Mike Slater, Federated agronomy sales rep at the Isanti location. Sirrus satellites gather crop images as they pass over the fields daily. “As long as it’s clear, with no cloud cover,” said Slater, the satellites “sense” plant health and growth, offering an image of how well a field is doing.

“NDVI is a measure of the state of plant health based on how the plant reflects light at certain frequencies (some waves are absorbed and others are reflected),” according to the Earth Observing System website. NDVI is used worldwide to track fields and monitor the impact of environmental conditions on agriculture.

With the premium Sirrus upgrade, growers can “use the NDVI images to pinpoint different areas of the field – the tough areas, for example – and pull tissue samples to see what’s going on,” said Slater. Areas that need to be “hit harded with fertilizer” are evident with the NDVI imaging. The specific pockets of concern are clearly visible with the images (which are also stored in the Sirrus app).

“We download [NDVI] images from the end of May until plant maturity,” said Slater. Once the plants mature, the light reflections change because “the green goes away.”

“[NDVI imaging] is a great way to get a bird's-eye view of an entire field,” he said, adding, “especially after the corn gets over head high.”

Sirrus Premium is an affordable and highly useful tool for any grower’s precision ag toolbox at $49.99/month, or $499.99/year. Feel free to ask your Federated Agronomist for sample NDVI images before you download the upgrade.