Farming - choose your cereals from home with virtual tour

Cereal growers who are not visiting variety plots in person ahead of this autumn’s planting decisions are being offered the opportunity to take a virtual tour of one breeder’s plots.

Syngenta UK is offering a high-resolution alternative with a new, 360-degree virtual tour of the plots which they exhibited at this year’s Cereals Event to growers on their website at www.syngenta.co.uk/varieties-tour, using new camera technology to allow growers to browse the plots.

Users can navigate to individual variety plots to get a panoramic view of the stand by clicking on ‘hotspots’ in front of each plot or by clicking directly to the variety via a conventional drop-down menu.

From here the breeders said that users could ‘walk’ into the plot for a closer, high-resolution inspection of the variety, as well as clicking into summary videos and information sheets that explain each variety’s key features.

These include information on yield and quality performance, suitability to different drilling dates and soil types, disease resistance and its maturity.

“Choosing the correct variety lays the foundation for the rest of the cropping year,” says Syngenta marketing and communications specialist for seeds and seedcare, Kimberley Baker.

“And inspecting varieties in plots at various events and open days over the summer is often a key part of the variety decision-making process.

“With this in mind, we wanted to provide growers and agronomists with an interactive experience that is as close as possible to visiting variety plots, even though they aren’t doing this in person.”