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Stuff's environment / climate section featured Spikey today, see , Meet Spikey: a nitrous oxide-busting machine | Stuff.co.nz
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Pastoral Robotics wins 2019 IMechE Energy Environment and Sustainability Group prize. The Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE)[1], one of the oldest and most internationally respected professional mechanical engineering bodies in the world, has just awarded Pastoral Robotics the Energy Environment and Sustainability Group prize. This annual prize is to be awarded to a Mechanical Engineer who has taken significant steps to bridge the gap between an unsustainable present and a more sustainable future. Geoff Bates, managing director of Pastoral Robotics, says ‘The award is recognition of the impact that Pastoral Robotics Limited’s technology will have on the world’s environment, minimising nitrate leaching and greenhouse gas emissions from Pastoral Farming. It is great to see NZ innovation being recognised by such a prestigious professional body.  The award is hugely gratifying and an honour to be recognised internationally. Geoff will speak at the group’s annual meeting in December at 1 Birdcage Walk, London, a venue that is a bastion of engineering history. Geoff sees the impact of farming on the environment as one of the most serious technical challenges of our time, one we have to solve in a manner that improves productivity and our standard of living without putting livelihoods at risk, ‘innovative new technology is the best, if not the only, way we can achieve this.’ [1] IMechE, based in London, was founded in 1847 and currently has 120,000 members in 140 different countries, see www.imeche.org/about-us  Geoff Bates with Spikey® Pastoral Robotics’ technology - Spikey® applies NitroStop® to urine patches to grow more pasture by harvesting the urine nitrogen. The Spikey® technology has proven to grow more grass, reduce nitrogen discharge to the air and water whilst improving profitability. Spikey is a platform for targeted treatment of the main source of leaching - cow urine spots. The precision Spikey provides opens up a multitude of opportunities to specifically target nitrogen losses to the air and water, it is a paradigm shift in the way pastoral farming can be managed.
 Pastoral Robotics Limited welcomes Denis Collins to our team. Denis will be focussing on selling Spikey® and ensuring customers get the maximum benefit from our revolutionary technology.
Spikey® is a machine that detects and treats urine to reduce Nitrogen losses - Spikey® has been running on farm for over two years and is ready for other farmers and the environment to reap the benefits. Ongoing research by independent bodies is showing significant reductions (30-70%) in leaching from our NitroStop® treatments. Denis has joined our team to help customers get the most from keeping their nitrogen on farm. In Denis’s own words: “Spikey is the only practical solution he has seen to reduce nitrate leaching and grow more grass.” Denis has the perfect background with an honours degree in Agricultural Science, and 3 year’s experience as a consulting officer with Dairy NZ, before a number of farming roles focussing on turning farms into profitable businesses. Denis understands both farm systems and the regulatory nightmare. Having worked with Miraka, he is well known in the Central North Island. Denis can be contacted on:
Geoff Bates, managing director of Pastoral Robotics, gave a presentation at the Callaghan Innovation Seminar held at Fieldays 2019. He highlights the problem of nitrate leaching in New Zealand waters. He also presents a solution that not only stops water pollution in dairy farms, but also significantly increases the grass growth, benefiting both the environment and farmers.
 Lysimeters are tubes of undisturbed earth (see sketch to the right) that allow us to capture and measure all the leachate from a treated grass / urine sample. Trials of our latest NitroStop formulation gave us a leaching reduction of 74% - an undisputable breakthrough in the battle to clean our rivers, lakes and aquifers. Next we will be repeating these trials to our new (larger) 50cm diameter lysimeter facility (see photo below) for autumn trials in April 2019.  Pastoral Robotics featured on Rural Delivery on Saturday the 7th of April 2018. To see the show on line goto: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/rural-delivery/episodes/s2018-e3
Pastoral Robotics announces lab results indicating DCD equivalence for our new nitrification inhibitor, NitroStop™. Testing of key components of the NitroStop™ urine patch treatment mix in rhizosphere (root zone) and lysimeter trials achieved the same level of nitrification inhibition as achieved with DCD. A major breakthrough in the dairy industry’s battle to clean up our water.
When NitroStop™ is applied through their innovative urine patch detection and treatment machine, Spikey®, it becomes a much needed practical solution to nitrate leaching which, at the same time, increases pasture growth and improves farm productivity. The withdrawal of the nitrification inhibitor DCD, due to residual detection in milk, left a hole in the dairy industry's available tools to fight nitrate leaching, possibly the biggest environmental challenge facing the dairy industry in New Zealand. Pastoral Robotics Limited is now able to fill that hole - using the revolutionary Spikey® machine and NitroStop™. The key ingredients of NitroStop™ are already used in agriculture for other applications and are not expected to have any residual issues. According to Geoff Bates, managing director of Pastoral Robotics Limited, the next step is to undertake much larger lysimeter trials to amass a body of evidence as to the effectiveness of the treatment which can be used to convince regional councils of the performance of this new solution to a problem of national concern. |
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