Why it exists
To support the agronomic advisory professional in their daily work. Technical advice improves when different bodies of knowledge and different tools are brought together. There is nothing revolutionary about it. Nothing similar exists simply because nobody wants to put in the time to make several concepts easier and join them up from practical application. Like everything else it can be done better or worse, but just trying to make it sound and useful already points the right way.
The idea is simple: make what we already know accessible so that the daily work of the adviser and the grower is better. Sometimes that is a tool that exists as a product nowhere else, sometimes it is the result of a trial, a laboratory measurement, a sensor built to resolve something no commercial equipment measured (or that is designed to measure in other systems and gets sold here anyway), or simply a field observation worth recounting. No advertising, no hot air and nothing asked in return for the basic tools. If they improve your decisions, that is enough for me.
The tools
There are utilities here you will not find anywhere else, not even paying for them. Not because they are secret, but because they come from specific farm problems nobody finds it worth solving as a product, or because whoever does solve them tends to know no agronomy, so what comes out falls very, very short: inverse fertiliser calculation to a target EC, fertiliser tank and mixing-pond balances, advanced nutritional diagnosis, pest phenology, or an in-house GIS.
The rest are the usual ones, but well built and with the assumptions on show: nutrient solutions, irrigation water analysis and water blending, soil analysis and interpretation, ETo and irrigation scheduling, system design, planting density, organic and broadacre fertilisation, the farm logbook (CUE), phenotyping and the design of variety and product trials.
Trials, sensors, notes and assorted contraptions
The site is more than just a collection of integrated calculators. Behind each tool there is work that also gets published: everyday situations and stranger ones as they come up, trial designs and their results, work on plant pathology and agricultural chemistry, and instrumentation development when commercial equipment does not measure what is needed, or does not measure it under the conditions here.
And then there is what fits no formal category: season experiences, things that went wrong and why, comparisons between what the datasheet says and what the probe reads, agronomic curiosities that lead to no decision but explain something. That material is half the value of the trade and almost never gets written down.
Main areas of work
- Fertigation and nutrition
- Nutrient solutions, inverse calculation by target EC, liquid fertilisers, fertiliser tank balances, injection calibration, nutritional requirements and advanced nutritional diagnosis.
- Water and irrigation
- Irrigation water analysis, water blending, ETo by several methods, system design and evaluation, substrate irrigation, pulses, and emitter and drainage control.
- Soil and organic matter
- Soil analysis interpretation, physical properties, salinity, organic and broadacre fertilisation, organic materials and substrates.
- Plant health
- Integrated pest management, degree-days and pest phenology from official station data, and lookup of plant protection products and their datasheets.
- Field logbook and data
- Farm logbook, records of operations and treatments, parcel management, automatic checks on everything, and per-user saved configurations.
- In-house GIS
- A full GIS integrated with SIGPAC land parcels, working layers, measurement, biodiversity design on the map and data capture on the farm.
- Trials and phenotyping
- Trial design, treatment comparison, crop phenotyping, cropping systems and results tracking.
- Instrumentation and sensors
- Development of agricultural and climate sensing, calibration of measuring equipment, contrast between datasheet and real reading, and an in-house plant pathology and agricultural chemistry laboratory.
Tools where you decide the data
In each tool you can use its data or your own. The aim is that you can review, change a hypothesis and look again. Where a model has limits, they are stated.
Underneath there are recognised agronomic models, which nearly always need heavy parameterisation or changes to be useful in a professional context. The calculation runs on the server, not in your browser, which is part of why an account is needed.
Who is behind it
I am Ismael Maldonado, chartered agricultural engineer. I work in the field every day doing integrated advisory work and agricultural engineering consultancy: fertigation and plant nutrition, plant health and integrated pest management, irrigation, soil, agronomic monitoring of the farm and no end of paperwork.
Everything published here passes through the farm first. If a tool is on this site it is because I needed it myself first, with real problems and somebody waiting for an answer.
- Profile
- Chartered agricultural engineer
- Based in
- Almería. Intensive greenhouse horticulture, conventional and organic
- Daily work
- Integrated advisory work and agricultural engineering consultancy, at the crop
- This site
- The tools that come out of that work, opened up to the rest of the sector
Background
Over seven years of technical advice on greenhouse horticultural crops in Almería. Coordination of projects with different departments. Work on fertigation and nutrition, integrated pest management, climate control, variety and product trials, production planning, cost control for customers and on our own farms, certification preparation, and training of technical and quality staff.
That work comes with in-house development, to give a better service at the companies I work for: a plant pathology and agricultural chemistry laboratory to adapt fertigation and biostimulation plans and to diagnose problems on an analytical basis straight away, without waiting days or weeks that put profitability at risk, field instrumentation, a one-of-a-kind mobile GIS application over SIGPAC land parcels and this agronomic tools platform.
The jobs change, the chain of work does not. The field is the axis: everything starts on the farm and goes back to it.
- Full field advisory Greenhouse horticulture, conventional and organic. Nutrition and irrigation, biological control, crop health, residue control and climate.
- Diagnosis on an analytical basis Water, soil, plant and pathogens with an in-house laboratory, residue control and customer crop protection protocols.
- Scheduling and profitability Crop calendars, production planning, analysis of production data, the search for more profitable products and cost control.
- Trials and commercial viability Variety and product trials, yield results and a rollout plan when the product pays off.
Whatever repeats becomes an in-house tool: calculation platform, field GIS and instrumentation. And back to the farm.
- Growing and keeping the grower portfolio
- Product rollout plans
- Technical support for input customers
- Supplier negotiation and campaign forecasting
- Training for technical teams and growers
- Certification, quality and social audits
- Status, production and cost reporting
- International customers and reporting to management
- Education
- Degree in Agricultural Engineering, University of Almería. Award for the best academic record from the Official College of Agronomic Engineers of Andalusia
- Certification
- Approved auditor in organic production (EU Regulation 2018/848). GLOBALG.A.P. IFA v6, GRASP, SPRING, IFS Food, BRC, HACCP
- Speciality
- Fertigation and plant nutrition, with in-house laboratory diagnosis built into the advisory work
- Development
- Agronomic web platform, field GIS application over SIGPAC, agricultural sensing and instrumentation
The tools on this site are the most direct sample of that work: they are in real use, by me and by other advisers, with growers behind them and with the assumptions on show.
WriteAccess and support
The basic tools are free and will stay that way. The rest depends on the group and the access level of each account. Within each tool, you decide what information you enter and what settings you save.
If you spot a fault, it gets fixed: bug support is for all users. Agronomic training and training in the use of the tools goes with the on-farm advisory work, not with the site.