Oaten hay quality is determined by the variety grown, management of the crop and environmental conditions, and then estimated once only upon delivery of hay to millers. Improvements in any of these areas will increase hay biomass and/or quality, which will lead to increased income, leading to benefits across the associated sectors in Australia.  This project will bring experts in advanced imaging and plant breeding together to create an affordable drone-based assessment tool for key hay quality traits. Using low-cost sensors and cloud-based analysis, this tool will be help hay growers and plant breeders improve hay quality.

Short-term project impact will occur for growers, as the tools developed in this project will help with decision making to optimise timing of cutting and maximise hay quality whilst simultaneously reducing risk associated with timing prioritisation across various paddocks. These benefits will flow to millers and exporters, by providing “early signals” around the intrinsic quality of incoming hay, of course pending weather damage. Millers and exporters will then be able to provide markets around supply assurance and locking in key high value markets earlier.

Longer term, the tools developed in this project will help with selection across the oaten hay breeding program and increase genetic gain by making large scale screening of breeding lines more efficient. Further, once improved genetics are available to growers, this tool will help reduce the risk to growers of adopting new varieties. This is because they’ll have increased knowledge around performance earlier than previously and can guide on-farm seed retention decisions in year 1 of testing new varieties.