Boreas Machine
The Boreas Wind Machine was named for the Greek god of the north wind. It was revealed to the public in 2009, however Pioneer has been using it since 2004. It was kept quiet during these five years to ensure all the necessary patents were in place before other research companies heard of it. It is currently being used to check crop stands and durability. One problem breeders face is the brittleness of stalks in certain genetic families. DuPont Pioneer invented the Boreas Machine to simulate wind storms that rip up crops and cause brittle snap. Below is a picture of the Boreas Machine.
Brittle snap occurs when fierce winds whip corn stalks about putting stress on the nodes of the corn plant. The picture below shows what brittle snap looks like. The node that the plant broke at is like our knee. However, if we break our knee, we can go in and a doctor will fix us. There is no coming back from this for plants. This can cause a substantial field loss for farmers.
The Boreas Machine is a modified sprayer. It has eight fans that point outward to blow down a row of corn. The speeds the fans are set at mimic the natural force of wind ranging between 60 to 140 mph. The process of blowing the corn can take a very long time because the machine only moves at a speed of three miles per hour. It is very difficult to do this test, because there needs to precise driving to ensure that all crop damage comes from wind and not driver error. Therefore, only four of Pioneer's research stations are equipped with Boreas equipment. All other stations ship seed to these stations for testing on their new hybrid lines. These three locations are in Wisconsin, Texas, and Willmar, MN.
During my employment at the Willmar Pioneer I was able to work on the Boreas Crew. We drove to the undisclosed research station in the early morning hours , because we did not want other research companies to know where our Pioneer plots were. The corn we blew was in it's final tests before becoming sold to the public. In the pitch dark, I hopped into the cab of the modified sprayer, set the wind speed to around eighty eight miles per hour, which correlates to my region. Other tests centers have different wind speeds.
The following day we count the number of broken plants caused by the artificial wind. This informs the breeder whether this variety is good for the region to plant or not.
This machine is part of the Accelerated Yield Technology system in Pioneer. They believe that by conducting this research on plant stands, yield will increase by over forty percent in the next nine years.
If this seems interesting, the following link is a short video that goes more indepth on the process and gives you a closer view on the machine itself. This video is the original release information from DuPont Pioneer. The company has not given out much more data on this technology or the results.
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This is a really good idea. It's amazing how see what lengths farming companies will go to help make yields better. Very interesting read, thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteWow this is a great review. I am in the ag field and I have never seen or heard of anything like this. However I have heard of Pioneer having very brittle and poor quality corn stocks and this is maybe why they made the machine. Very interesting read!
ReplyDeleteThe Boreas Machine sounds like a great piece of technology for your area of study! I thought you did a great job of breaking down what the purpose of the machine was. I also really like you have personal experience with this machine instead of just researching it.
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