Agronomics: transforming crop science through digital technologies

Good progress in crop husbandry and science requires that impacts of field-scale interventions can be measured, analysed and interpreted easily and with confidence. The term ‘agronomics’ describes the arena for research created by field-scale digital technologies where these technologies can enable effective commercially relevant experimentation. Ongoing trials with ‘precision-farm research networks’, along with new statistical methods (and associated software), show that robust conclusions can be drawn from digital field-scale comparisons, but they also show significant scope for improvement in the validity, accuracy and precision of digital measurements, especially those determining crop yields.