North Wyke Farm Platform

North Wyke › Farm Platform

Principal Investigator

Team members

Follow @FarmPlatform

The Farm Platform provides a Research Hotel for agri-environmental research to attract researchers from different communities and disciplines to promote new ideas or tackle old problems in new ways. The Farm Platform is globally unique in that it can provide the research community access to a range of in situ state-of-the-art instrumentation in hydrologically isolated fields and farmlets to better address key issues in sustainable agriculture related to, for example:

› Replacement of N fertiliser with N-fixation by legumes - achieving a reduction in energy and GHG emissions for both environmental and economic reasons
› Using plants to manage soils and hydrology
› Efficient phosphorus cycling in grassland systems
› Resilience of soil biota and their functions to land-use change
› Impact of grassland management on C cycling and storage - C sequestration
› Water resource use efficiency
› Systems modelling to design optimal grassland production systems

The Farm Platform provides three farming systems consisting of five component fields comprising just over 20 ha in total per farmlet. All the water leaving individual fields is channelled through a flume (15 in total).

The underlying principle is to manage each of these farmlets differently and record the impact on water, air and soil. As a National Capability, we will provide the set of core data (see table) from across the Platform that will be available to all research users and collaborators. The main 'treatments' on the platform will be:

Best practice beef and sheep production as a 'control' and with typical management and inputs to maximise sustainable production.

Reduced input beef and sheep production where inorganic-N inputs are reduced and replaced as far as possible with biologically fixed-N via legumes.

Innovation farming using the latest techniques and technologies and be responsive to rapid changes and advances in technologies and methods. This may include: precision farming, new varieties, use of organic amendments (slurries / AD/ green compost and other emerging organic resources), bioenergy cropping. This treatment will allow a greater degree of intervention and adjustment.

3D Spatial Modelling System

The Spatial Modelling System for North Wyke created by Anita Shepherd and Bruce Griffith, merges satellite imagery with LIDAR in a GIS together with sampled field parameters.

The video playlist below shows two clips. The first is a 51 second rotational view of the site, the second one is a 1m41s fly through.

Core data parameters

Water Chemistry
(at 15 Flumes)

Soil parameters
(in each Farmlet)

Atmosphere

Farm Management

Nitrate
Ammonium
Dissolved Organic Carbon
Turbidity
Water Flow
Temperature
Conductivity
pH
Dissolved Oxygen
Chloride
Phosphate (at 3 Flumes)

Soil Moisture
Soil Temperature
pH
Bulk Density
Soil Biology (PLFA)
Decomposition
Soil C, P and N
Plant Diversity

Rainfall
Temperature
CO₂ and N₂O via automated chambers

Live-weight gain
Field inputs
Field outputs
Farm activities
Labour hours
Machine hours

A publicly accessible Farm Platform Website will provide a portal to all activities relating to the National Capability. It will contain documentation, experimental calendars and details of protocols as well as information about how new studies can be initiated using the FP. The aim will be to create an active FP user community and keep them informed about progress and new opportunities for collaborative research. A data retrieval and analysis web site with user access controls will be developed which integrates all the data related to the FP and which will form the repository of data for access by the user community.