Will it work, or not? Tension is mounting for East
Midlands contractor Steve Heard as harvest approaches and the
results of hispioneering soil exhaust injection systemare revealed.
Last autumn, Mr Heard became the first person in Europe to trial
the
NC-Quest
system, which claims to reduce the fertiliser requirement of crops
by pumping tractor exhaust gas into the seedbed.
"It's going to be very interesting when we get the combines
rolling - and not a little nerve-wracking," he says. "One of them
will be fitted with a yield-mapping system and I plan to weigh the
grain harvested from treated and untreated plots to get a
comparison."
Earlier this year, Mr Heard reported that treated areas of the
1400ha (3500 acres) of cereals grown on land he farms at Illston on
the Hill, Leicester, were looking greener and more advanced than
those drilled normally.
Since then, a biomass field comparison map generated by a
Yara N-sensor has highlighted the extra crop density in treated
strips of fields. Not just that, but results of soil samples taken
by Reading University before any nitrogen applications were made
have shown a 300% increase in available ammonia in treated
plots.
Buoyed by these results, Mr Heard, in conjunction with
Cranfield University, has
applied for a DEFRA Link
grant to help fund research into understanding how the injection of
exhaust gas may benefit the soil. "The harvest will provide the
first indication of whether the system works - and there are a lot
of people waiting to see the results," he says. "Despite some
promising signs, I'm keeping an open mind."
