Real-Time Calibrated Cotton Yield Monitor

Cotton yield monitors are important in identifying the variability of cotton yield to generate high-resolution yield maps and to determine revenue and profit across farm fields. Multiple yield monitors have been developed and commercialized over roughly the past two decades, but their reported lack of accuracy and repeatability means the data requires time consuming calibration during the harvest and post-correction in GIS software. Newer onboard-moduling harvesters have the potential to calibrate each yield data for each module automatically, but earlier harvesters do not have the built-in capability. Therefore, a highly accurate yield-data calibration system has been coupled with a yield monitor that has proven effective at the research level. The new system comprises four major components: a pair of mass flow sensors, a single data processing system, an onboard weight-based calibration system, and a GPS receiver. The data processing system works as the “brain” of the system to (a) receive data from mass flow sensors, the GPS receiver, and the onboard weight-based calibration system, (b) process and store data, and (c) control the display of the results and communication between all the other components of the system. The combined new system was field tested on a cotton stripper during harvest in December 2018 and in November and December 2019 in Lubbock, Texas. Results indicated a strong linear relationship between the accumulated voltage data obtained by the mass flow sensors and weight data received by the onboard weight-based calibration system (R² ≈0.98).