There is a wealth of information that can be extracted from yield monitor data. Yield maps can be an important management tool to quantify the impact of management practices including water, fertility, pest control, variety selection, etc. (Andrade-Sanchez and Heun, 2013). Yield monitoring technology provides farm managers with information to improve input utilization, therefore many guidelines for their use are available online, including university cooperative extension bulletins for grain crops (Grisso et al, 2009, Adamchuk et al. 2004), and cotton (Vellidis et al. 2013 a-b). Since most of these resources were generated for the US Midwest and South-East regions, there is a need to develop up-to-date materials that apply directly to the irrigated Southwest conditions. Production of cotton and small grains in semi-arid conditions of Arizona are characterized by long growing seasons and high yields. Therefore high volumes of vegetative material are handled by harvesting machines creating particular needs for frequent, effective calibration.
New combine machines and cotton pickers are available with integrated yield monitors and older machines can easily be retrofitted with systems. Harvest machines fitted with yield monitoring electronics can provide high-resolution field data to a grower. Although yield data from an uncalibrated machine may be useful for looking at the general variability within a field, a properly calibrated system can allow us to quantify those differences and even help us make real-time business or operational decisions without waiting for gin/ elevator weigh values.
Here, we will discuss what is needed to perform calibrations on instrumented grain combines and cotton pickers, an evaluation of how well these systems performed in various crops harvested in central Arizona, and tips for successful data collection from these systems.