myGus in the fields: MAC

Contents

The MAC application (MyGus Aux Champs) of our software solution Gus³ was designed for and with crop monitoring specialists, in different production contexts: cereals, horticulture, hybridization or not, large-scale crops, micro-production, etc.
It has therefore greatly benefited from the expertise of its users, making it a tool that is as close as possible to the realities of the work carried out by crop monitoring technicians and to their needs.
MAC now totals more than 5 years of research and development.

It is a mobile application that aims to accelerate, facilitate, secure and optimize live crop monitoring from cultivated areas (parcels, greenhouses, tunnels, etc.), using a computer, tablet or telephone, from the office or from the fields, regardless of the cultivation method used, the production stage, the species and variety concerned.

This intuitive, comprehensive and powerful tool offers a wide range of functionalities covering every stage of your crop monitoring, not only per batch, but also down to sowing or plant level; this is particularly important in hybridization, notably to identify the female and male parents of a batch and the basic seed batches at the origin of the contracts.

With MAC, your crop monitoring technicians can:
  • carry out crop monitoring fieldnotes: plant stage (BBCH or personalized scale), compliance, treatments applied, incidents (hail, flooding, etc.), diseases, pests, etc. and add comments, photos and audio recordings if necessary.
  • manage batches and sowing: surface areas (actual/harvested), TKW (Thousand Kernel Weight), density, estimated yield, etc.
  • divide batches in the event of an incident (for example, a hail damaged part in a parcel).
  • establish a precise mapping and history of the inspected parcels, integrating the hierarchy of batches and sowing.
  • add and circulate files (product description sheets, contracts, growing instructions, greenhouse plans, etc.).
  • visualize the campaign variety report (graphs).
  • view the weather forecasts.
  • carry out procedures myGus.
  • manage data intended for the seed certification agency such as in France SEMAE.
MAC is based on the proven technology of our ERP iGus and our myGus procedural assistant.
The data from MAC and iGus automatically synchronize as soon as there is a network.
The application is available in French and English, for Windows and Android.

 

Simplified and secured crop monitoring fieldnotes

In MAC, the identity of the crop monitoring technicians is systematically memorized, at each connection.

In addition, the application provides a detailed history of all the monitoring operations carried out, per visit date (from the most recent to the oldest); this history is automatically updated in the course of the visits.

Faithful to the logic and objectives of our myGus procedural assistant, the MAC application guides and secures fieldnotes taking from one end of the crop monitoring to the other.

Most fieldnotes are based on information previously set up in your ERP iGus according to your needs:
  • cultivated species and varieties,
  • field operations,
  • analyses and observations,
  • stages of the plant,
  • treatments (products, active materials, targets),
  • variety purity and yield (impurities, mutants),
  • etc.



The settings can be updated in the blink of an eye. This is very convenient, for example if you need to remove a product from your treatment list because it has suddenly been banned!

Fieldnotes taking in MAC is assisted, secured and made quicker: 
  • drop-down lists,
  • checkboxes,
  • integrated calendar,
  • built-in calculator.


Some analyses and operations are calculated automatically by the application, using calculation formulas that may use other information present in iGus (accepted area of ​​the contract, number of batches in the contract, germination capacity, number of contracts of the propagator, etc.); these calculations can even be done in cascade.

Your technicians can also very easily supplement their fieldnotes (analysis results, monitoring operations, batches, sowing, etc.) with written comments, voice messages and photos which, in the heat of the visits, are often better than long written accounts; and what's more, each photo can be complemented by a specific comment.

Navigation in MAC is easy and fluid:
  • possibility of displaying contracts in the order that suits the technician; for example in the order of his visits.
  • easy and quick transition from one contract to another.
  • possibility of sorting contracts from a wide range of criteria: by propagator, culture, surface area, line of product, product, designation, mother, father, generation, stage, date of last visit, etc.
  • possibility of filtering contracts by harvest year.
  • etc.
Additionally, in MAC, your crop monitoring technicians have access to all the data present in iGus concerning the identity of varieties:
  • sterility,
  • female and male cycle expressed in days,
  • growth strategy and flowering height for the female and for the male,
  • synchronization between female and male,
  • information on the pollination method,
  • theoretical flowering start date.
And they are constantly informed of the general state of the culture thanks to the presence, on each contract, of an emoji obeying a specific color code (from green - good condition, to red - bad condition).

Not forgetting many additional functionalities, easily accessible from the MAC contextual menus, which also contribute to providing a lot of agility and flexibility when using the application:
  • create a keyboard shortcut for a button,
  • show or hide the columns of a table,
  • export a table to Excel format,
  • change the appearance and scale of a graph,
  • color the lines of a table,
  • add recap calculation lines (sum, average, maximum, etc.),
  • etc.

Contract, batch and sowing management

MAC provides the essential data of the contracts and allows for detailed management of the batches and sowing produced. In particular, it includes:

  • deliveries of basic seeds at the origin of the contracts,
  • batches produced by the contracts (yield, surface area, TKW, etc.),
  • recommendations and implementations concerning sowing: sowing and planting dates, number of plants and density (theoretical and actual) for females and males, duration of sowing (in number of days),
  • contract forecasts (size, expected quantity, etc.),
  • division of batches and sowing, for example in the event of hail on one part of a crop or of cutting work on one part of a sowing operation,
  • contract information (sowing device, farmer's contact details, accepted surface area, quantity ordered, etc.),
  • affiliated contracts, for example in the case of a perennial crop carried out over several years,
  • etc.



At any time during crop monitoring, it is possible to modify the batches, the sowing and their characteristics, but also to create new ones, and even to divide them.

Cartography

In the MAC application, everything has been designed so that your technicians can establish a precise and tailor-made map of the surface areas they inspect.

The MAC Cartography tool is based on the production plan data in iGus, on the data entered in MAC as well as on the geographic data of the geolocation application Google Maps. 
In concrete terms, your crop monitoring technicians draw directly on the maps of Google Maps the cultivated areas they inspect: parcels of propagators, greenhouses, tunnels, etc. They can also divide a parcel into several sub-parcels or a greenhouse into several sub-sections, or even visually divide a batch (for example to isolate a hail damaged part).



Your technicians can also represent specific elements that are important for the management of crops:
  • pollination zones for hybrid crops and possible obstacles to pollination, 
  • logistical means, such as storage sheds,
  • geographical points, which you can name,
  • etc.
The many functionalities of MAC Cartography allow for a very fine management of the cultivated surface areas; it is thus possible to:
  • save a specific view at a given moment and then provide it later, including in a campaign different from the one in which the map was saved.
  • filter map display per farmer, variety, brand, contract.
  • adapt the size of a map so that, for example, you can view all the parcels on it at a glance.
  • declare a production on all or a part of a parcel, for a campaign, a contract or if not for a production line.
  • self-locate on the map, for example to draw a parcel while walking through it. 
  • change view mode: plan view / satellite view / 360° view (Street View).
  • export a map as an image so that, among other things, it can be viewed in MAC offline.
This way, your technicians customize the maps according to their needs. 

They can choose to share their maps with the rest of the team for collaborative work, or simply circulate them for consultation.

MAC cartography allows you to access a lot of useful information: crop history per cultivated surface areas, GPS coordinates of the parcel, farmer cultivating the parcel, variety in production, actual surface area calculated by MAC, etc.

And if necessary, you can also save, to your MAC, maps from the French national portal Géoportail : cadastral parcel, land register, precedents, relief, etc.

Campaign variety report

In the MAC application, your technicians also have access to your production statistics, calculated and updated from the most recent data available in iGus, and presented in the form of a recap table and graphs:
  • summary of grouped contracts by sterility type,
  • total surface area,
  • average, reference, minimum, maximum, actual yields,
  • average TKW and germination capacity of the contracts, weighted by the surface area of ​​the batches concerned,
  • devices used,
  • etc.

The campaign variety report is generated automatically.

These statistics remain accessible in MAC, with or without a network; thus, even from the most "remote" parcels, your technicians can compare at a glance the observed yields with those which are contractually expected... And they will be able to sound the alarm if necessary! 
And since these statistics can be saved per campaign, they remain available for any future comparisons that may be necessary...

Document sharing

Each technician can import the information of his/her choice into the MAC application, in the form of pdf, image, Excel, Word, html or xml files:
  • contract giver files,
  • product description sheets (for example, yours, precisely those that your technicians are used to and will be delighted to find in MAC),
  • various regulations (for example, on treatments),
  • parcel plans,
  • propagation contracts,
  • etc.

Depending on needs and relevance, these files can be linked to a farmer, a variety, a contract, or a batch. This makes it easy to find these files on all the relevant contracts, but also to circulate them to all the other MAC terminals as soon as there is a network.

Weather forecasts

Our MAC application is not a rainmaker yet, but it does predict the weather, and what's more, down to the parcel, hourly and daily, for the week to come! This way you know if it's time to sow, how the sowing will grow, and so on. And of course, you'll also be able to take advantage of the best possible weather conditions to plan your visits!



The weather data offered in MAC come from OpenWeather and include a wide range of information essential for crop monitoring: temperature (actual, perceived, etc.), precipitation, humidity, UV index, visibility, atmospheric pressure, dew point, cloud cover, wind direction, strength, gusts, etc. 

And eventually, it will be possible to record the weather history per day of visit.

Integrated myGus terminal

MyGus is the data acquisition tool of the software suite Gus³ It supports operators in the field to facilitate and secure data, and optimize the processes of organizations.

For myGus, any process can be divided into small functional modules. MyGus calls them "operations". Thus, myGus cuts down a process into a series of elementary operations, which are sequenced in a certain way to construct procedures: a set of simple and elementary instructions thus make it possible to accomplish a given mission.


As the application myGus is accessible from MAC, you do not need to multiply licenses, applications or terminals!

So you can launch myGus directly from MAC and carry out tailor-made procedures, which we create to meet your specific needs; for example: preparation of sowing, printing of labels, weighing of harvest, etc.

Data synchronization between MAC and iGus

In the absence of a network, MAC operates in asynchronous mode, starting from the latest data synchronized from iGus ; so, with or without a network, the work can go on:
  • with MAC in their pocket, your technicians go on their visits with all the available and up-to-date data iniGus.
  • in the field, the technicians save to the application, along their visits, their fieldnotes, yield estimates, drawings of cultivated areas, etc.
  • the data are automatically synchronized between MAC and the central database iGus, in both directions, as soon as there is a network:
    • the new data in iGus are automatically transmitted to the MAC terminals,
    • the data entered from the crop fields are automatically uploaded to iGus, before being sent down to the other members of the crop monitoring team.
This means the data are synchronized as often as possible. And they can even arrive at the seed station before your technicians!

MAC and SEMAE

What if the data that must be sent to the seed certification agency, such as SEMAE, as part of the crop declaration, could be transmitted directly from our MAC application? And this, without necessarily going through FISEM, the software allowing the data entry of seed and phytosanitary inspection sheets regarding the crops declared to the seed certification agency ( SEMAE)… The fact is that, with or without FISEM, MAC is able to retrieve all the data requested by the seed certification agency ( SEMAE). So why not make the most of it? 

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