Water is one of the most important inputs in agriculture, and is often the most significant factor limiting crop yield, particularly in dryland farming. Working with EMILI at Innovation Farms powered by AgExpert during the 2025 season allowed Crop Intelligence to fine-tune its Dryland Farming Ultra Package to help producers better understand their water driven yield potential (WDYP).
Dryland Farming Ultra is a hardware and software solution that allows farmers and agronomists to monitor the total available water for their crop, and use that information to make informed decisions on overall crop agronomy. Often, producers use soil tests and tissue tests and base agronomy decisions on these results. Crop Intelligence allows producers to take it one step further to measure how much can be grown based on the total amount of water available.
“I think there are a lot of assumptions in any given year about how much can be grown, but without actually measuring it, it’s impossible to know whether we’re maximizing what our true crop potential is in each season, or whether we are getting better over time,” said Brian Archibald, a territory business agronomist with Crop Intelligence.
The system uses weather stations and soil moisture probes installed between seed rows to monitor environmental conditions and soil moisture throughout the season, and is able to determine how much rain is making its way into the soil profile and how much is running off or not being captured. From there, Crop Intelligence’s software determines the water driven yield potential for that crop – the total yield potential based on water alone. This helps producers apply the 4Rs, determining the correct amount of nutrients to be applied at the right time and place.
Innovation Farms Summer Student Cole Ives works with a Crop Intelligence weather station.
During the 2025 season, two Dryland Farming Ultra weather stations were installed at EMILI’s Innovation Farms – one in a canola field and another in a wheat field. Over the course of the season, the Innovation Farms team used the Crop Intelligence app to gain insights on weather station and soil moisture data to validate whether Crop Intelligence’s WDYP model effectively provides real-time insights into how much water is available to crops, and to increase understanding of the technology’s effectiveness at estimating crop yield potential.
“Working with EMILI at Innovation Farms allows us to further develop our models and offer more accurate and improved insights,” said Archibald.
“The team at EMILI, they’re out in the field taking notes on crop growth staging, environmental conditions, insect pressure, disease pressure. What their detailed notes allow us to do is really fine-tune how we generate our water driven yield potential. At the same time, it helps us to gain more confidence in what we’re developing as next steps, too. Being able to document everything throughout the season gives us the overall picture of everything. Without that there are a lot of assumptions that have to be made in between which can limit the accuracy.”
During the 2025 season, EMILI’s Innovation Farms team found that Crop Intelligence’s weather stations estimated the WDYP with relative accuracy, and that insights collected from the weather stations have the potential for ROI by guiding producers on the ideal use of inputs, either saving on costs or helping to optimize growth. Archibald said that looking ahead to the next season, Crop Intelligence will work on further developing its models in crops including potatoes and corn, adjusting the models for different soil textures.
“Being able to monitor and manage water throughout the season allows you to fine-tune your management practices and really drive ROI down to your bottom line,” said Archibald.
“Looking at yield as a function of bushels per inch of water is really a true image of what your farm is doing, and allows you to make better decisions as you go forward. At the end of the day, water is very important, and while there are a lot of factors that go into overall crop yield, it is harder to make decisions off of limited information. So being able to have the full picture, I think, is super important.”
Visit EMILI’s Innovation Farms to learn more about this project and other activities. EMILI hosts field tours and demonstrations on Innovation Farms throughout the season to showcase new agricultural technology, expand innovation opportunities, and increase understanding and adoption of digital tools.