Oliver Schmittmann

• Dr.agr.
• University of Bonn

Die digitale Transformation in der Landwirtschaft vollzieht sich mit neuen Technologien und Verfahren. Damit verbunden sind Erwartungen an Produktivitätssteigerungen, Optimierung des Ressourceneinsatzes oder verbesserte Nachhaltigkeitseffekte. Für etablierte Techniken gibt es bereits standardisierte Prüf- und Testverfahren, deren Ergebnisse es den...

Agricultural production in Central Europe increasingly suffers from extreme drought events. Improving root access to nutrient and water resources in the subsoil below the plow layer is a potential option to maintain productivity during dry summers. Here, we tested a strip-wise subsoil amelioration method that combines subsoil loosening with organic...

Content Vehicle Guidance Track Planning – an implements point of view 1 Guiding principles and challenges in the context of environment perception and geofencing in the agricultural application domain 7 Automatic track guidance in high-standing maize crops 15 Standardization AEF – Digital Camera Systems – A new project team working on an AEF Functi...

Soil is the habitat for soil organisms and associated soil physical and chemical processes. The subsoil is a large reserve of water and nutrients. Soil and subsoil are thus significantly involved in the yield capacity of a site and its resilience in the case of unfavorable weather conditions. Subsoil can also retain water in drought phases and stor...

In agriculture, efforts are being made to reduce pesticides and fertilizers because of the possible negative environmental impacts, high costs, political requirements, and declining social acceptance. With precision farming, significant savings can be achieved by the site-specific application of fertilizers. In contrast to currently available singl...

Accurate prediction of root growth and related resource uptake is crucial to accurately simulate crop growth especially under unfavorable environmental conditions. We coupled a 1D field-scale crop-soil model running in the SIMPLACE modeling framework with the 3D architectural root model CRootbox on a daily time step and implemented a stress functio...

INHALT Electrical Agricultural Machines Structuring of electrified agricultural machine systems – Diversity of solutions and analysis methods .....1 GridCON2 – Development of a Cable Drum Vehicle Concept to Power 1MW Fully Electric Agricultural Swarms ..... 11 GridCON Swarm – Development of a Grid Connected Fully Autonomous Agricultural Production...

Farmers require diverse and complex information to make agronomical decisions about crop management including intervention tasks. Generally, this information is gathered by farmers traversing their fields or glasshouses which is often a time consuming and potentially expensive process. In recent years, robotic platforms have gained significant trac...

An increasing challenge for agriculture in times of climate change is to sustainably ensure or increase the yield capacity of crop production. Low-yielding sites are particularly at risk in this respect. One strategy to counteract is to promote the use of the subsoil. This article describes the technical procedure and development of an implement fo...

In agriculture, efforts are being made to reduce pesticides and fertilizers because of the possible negative environmental impacts, high costs, political requirements, and declining social acceptance. With precision farming, significant savings can be achieved via the application of herbicides and fertilizers to individual plants. In contrast to cu...

The reduction of pesticides in agriculture is being driven forward due to negative environmental impacts, high costs, political requirements, and declining social acceptance. Depending on weed population, a plant-specific application can save up to 90 % herbicides. Current studies of digital plant recognition mostly focus on camera-based systems, a...

In recent years, the interest in subsoil has increased, since it can hold immense reservoirs of nutrients, organic matter and water. The subsoil can therefore provide important ecosystem services for the agricultural production system and beyond. This paper assesses the sustainability of two subsoil management measures with regard to the delivery o...

Ensiling and compaction of silage crops in bags is a well proved method to store fodder anaerobically to feed animals throughout the year. The essential process principle is to compact the silage substrate using a rotor into a press tunnel and the connected plastic bag to generate an oxygen-free environment. The objective of this study was to devel...

This study examined the effect of stripwise subsoiling and subsoiling combined with the incorporation of organic material on crop development in a two-year field trial with typical weather in the first year and hot, dry weather in the second. Subsoiling and its combination with incorporated organic materials had strong effects on plant development...

The subsoil below the regularly tilled topsoil stores large nutrient stocks and can retain water even under drought conditions. Mechanical soil profile modifications, commonly referred to as deep tillage, could improve the plant availability of these subsoil resources. However, field studies on the benefits of deep tillage have delivered inconsiste...

Previous studies have shown that deep tillage, so-called subsoiling, is beneficial for yield development, and that tillage of deeper soil layers can promote water and nutrient availability during dry periods. The application of composts to the topsoil has been widely studied and evaluated, and it has been shown to improve soil stability and plant N...

Plant-specific herbicide application requires sensor systems for plant recognition and differentiation. A literature review reveals a lack of sensor systems capable of recognizing small weeds in early stages of development (in the two- or four-leaf stage) and crop plants, of making spraying decisions in real time and, in addition, are that are inex...

Strip-till save costs by reducing tillage on the area of sugar beet rows only. The seeding system is characterized by a deep loosening of soil with a tine combined with a share and by following tools generating fine-grained soil as seed bed. In cooperation with the Kverneland company group Soest/Germany a strip tiller combined with precision seeder...

Field demonstrations in Seligenstadt, Germany over two days in mid-October 2012 comprised the evaluation of nine sugar beet harvesters and four cleaner-loaders from seven manufacturers. Quality parameters examined for harvesters were beet losses (both surface and sub-surface), root breakage, soil tare and topping quality (accuracy and crown retenti...

Field trials were conducted on luvisol during 2009-2011 around Seligenstadt (near Wiirzburg,Germany) to compare five 12 row precision seed drills. Four of the five drills were operated mechanically and the fifth, pneumatically. The central aim was to study the efficacy of these drills regarding spacing accuracy and field emergence at different spee...

Three years (2009-2011) of seed drill tests were conducted on fields around Seligenstadt (near Wurzburg), to assess the quality of work by five 12-row seeders, using mulching equipment and under conditions of luvisol (loess). Four of the devices marketed in Germany operate mechanically, one pneumatically. Aside from plant germination, the study mai...

Quadratic compounds of sugar beets (33 x 33 cm) were sown to be suited for mechanical weeding by length- and transverse hoeing. Thus, the area between plants in the row could be treated using the same hoeing implement as used for hoeing between the rows. From leaf stage four until fourteen hoeing was carried out three times and the number of weeds...

A combined horizontal penetrometer was designed for the on-the-go and simultaneous measurement of soil water content and mechanical resistance. The maximum sampling rate for both sensors was 10 Hz and the maximum operating depth was 20 cm. For the water-content sensor, its measurement principle depends on the electric field of the fringe-capacitanc...