Assessing various techniques to monitor yield in sugarcane

Abstract

Within the Australian Sugar industry a number of attempts have been made to monitor yield variation across a block. These have ranged from the early yield monitoring systems based on discrete mass measurement, to the current focus of predicting yield via surrogate measurements based on chopper pressure, feed train roller displacement and elevator power. Previous work indicated that the commercially available mass flow sensors did not provide an accurate indication of the yield present in the field. Rather than testing commercially available sensors, this paper details the testing that was conducted on evaluating the measurement concept. These concepts included; the pressure drop across the elevator and chopper motors, a load cell in the elevator floor and the angle of opening of the top feed roller. These concepts cover those being employed in the commercial units, both past and present. Trials were conducted during the 2010 season in the Bundaberg district of Queensland. A Campbell Scientific CR3000 datalogger was used to read each of the sensors at 40 Hz and record the averaged value every second, along with the GPS information, fuel usage, temperate etc.. In addition to this sensor data, sugarcane yield was also measured using mill weight data in order to determine the accuracy and resolution of the respective yield monitoring systems. This paper reports on the findings of this work and makes recommendations for further refining the devices and for additional work.