08 Oct PEI AWP Sponsors Pilot Project Investigating the Use of Drone Technology to Establish a Cover Crop into Standing Soybeans
In September, 2025 the PEI AWP sponsored a pilot project investigating the use of drone technology to establish a cover crop into standing soybeans.
In the past five years, PEI has planted an average of 32,684 acres of soybeans, with a substantial portion of this crop planted in rotation with potatoes. Soybeans can often be harvested too late to effectively establish a cover crop by ground-based methods and broadcasting a cover crop prior to harvest with conventional equipment results in considerable crop damage.
Soybeans are considered to be a low-residue crop and stems are cut very close to the ground at harvest. The fine textured leaves and straw left on the ground decompose rapidly. As a result, PEI soybean fields exhibit very little residue cover in the spring after harvest, leaving the fields vulnerable to spring rains and runoff.
Seeding a cover crop into soybeans prior to harvest using a UAV has been trialled in an Ontario Living Labs Project conducted by OMAFA Soil specialist Jake Munroe, in cooperation with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. So far, the best results were with cereal rye seeded by a drone into 30-inch soybeans at between 10% and 50% leaf drop.
On September 22, 2025, the PEIAWP teamed up with Agronomic AI, an agribusiness offering a variety of UAV based services to the island agriculture community, and Weekstown Holsteins, a dairy farm based in Fredericton, PEI to trial the establishment of a winter wheat cover crop into standing soybeans. The field will be monitored over the winter and in spring to gauge the success of the trial.
SOURCES
Statistics Canada. Table32-10-0359-01 – Estimated areas, yield, production, average farm price and total farm value of principal field crops, in metric and imperial units
Decisions About Soybean Residue Management. Yvonne Lawley, Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers.
Soybean School: Drone seeding cover crops takes flight. Bernard Tobin, Ontario Field Editor, RealAgriculture