Technology Adds Efficiencies in Counting Plants and Assessing Early-Stage Crops

By: Laurie Bedord

Calculated soon after plants emerge, stand counts and seedling assessments help producers gain a rough estimate of potential crop losses. New technology from Corteva Agriscience offers an improvement on the traditional process of gathering this information, crucial in determining next steps.

The manual process generally is conducted by measuring 1 ∕1,000 acre based on row width, counting the number of live plants in the measured area, repeating this process multiple times in random locations across a field, and then extrapolating the total losses. It is not only time-consuming but also often inaccurate.