Upcoming Grey County SCIA Crop Walk

Jul 05, 2024

Come for the walk; stay for the fun and information about soil, seeds, and crops.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Image by Pexels from Pixabay

The Grey County Soil & Crop Improvement Association will be holding a Crop Walk on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Proton Station, Ontario, at Highland Custom Farming Inc.

Components of the tour include guided stops looking at wheat planted in 15-inch rows, new corn herbicides, biological treatments, soybeans, cranberry beans, oats, crop biosecurity protocols, cutting-edge equipment, and an elevator tour.

The event will run from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and includes lunch and refreshments. Special thanks go to Holmes Agro, Sprucedale Agromart, and Pioneer Seeds for their sponsorship of the lunch and refreshments.

All are welcome to join in on this fun and informative day. The cost is free for Soil & Crop members and $10 for non-members.

Please register by July 11, 2024, by emailing georgiancentralscia@ontariosoilcrop.org or by calling 519-986-3756.

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.