Spectrum Technologies are now the proud winners of nineteen AE50 awards. The awards are given by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers to recognise outstanding technology innovation. Products winning the AE50 awards are to represent the best products developed for the agricultural, food and biological systems industries.

Recent Spectrum Technologies winning products are:

• WaterScout SMEC 300 Soil Moisture/EC/Temperature Sensor
• WatchDog 1000 Series Micro Station
• LightScout DLI 100 Light Meter

The winning innovations are chosen if they are expected to save producers time, costs, labour and also improve user safety.

Spectrum Technologies, Inc., has been honored this year with not one but two, AE50 Awards from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. A leading manufacturer of weather stations, data loggers, and handheld measurement devices; Spectrum was recently recognized for their LightScout^™ DLI 100 Light Meter.

The LightScout DLI 100 Light Meter is a simple, one button operated meter that measures the light "falling" on your plants.  The DLI 100 Meter measure PAR light (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) and with a push of a button the meter runs for 24 hours and calculates your Daily Light Integral (DLI).  The DLI 100 Meter is sold in sets of 3 so you

Introducing Spectrum's WaterScout SMEC 300 Soil Moisture/EC/Temperature Sensor

Spectrum Technologies, Inc., is proud to introduce their new WaterScout® Soil Moisture/EC/Temperature Sensor which has earned an AE50 Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

The new Spectrum SMEC 300 Sensor measures 3 key soil properties; moisture, EC, and temperature with little or no disturbance to the root zone. The carbon ink EC electrodes provide a large conductive surface area. The EC sensor can be calibrated with a simple, 1-step process. Use the available hand-held reader to take fast and accurate spot readings. Or, bury the sensor and track soil moisture changes over time with a WatchDog data-logging

As the Product Development Manager for Becker Underwood my work involves lots of field trials on development of novel wetting agent technology or customer support for current products such as Affinity. In order to carry out my trials I need an accurate, reliable, mobile and user friendly soil moisture probe. I have been using the TDR300 since I brought it from EnviroMonitors two years ago. I am very happy with this bit of kit and would recommend it. It is ideal for what I use it for. It has a range of probe lengths which are easily changed to adapt the equipment to your need. I use the shortest, 3 cm, probes to measure the water content change near the top of the soil profile. The long handle means you  don’t have to constantly bend down to push the probes into the soil. The easily removed probes mean they can be quickly removed for transport to avoid potential damage during transit. The TDR300 allows me to make many recordings when in the field and then download them down onto my computer

Chris Haspell, Course Manager at Castle Stuart Golf Club, first saw the FieldScout TDR300 Soil Moisture Meter at the American Superintendents Golf Show. Castle Stuart is a links course on a pure sand base which opened in 2009. Located in Inverness in the Highlands the course has a picture perfect setting in winter and in a normal year there is limited rainfall.

Chris wanted to invest in the TDR300 for “water conservation and the need to keep the sands at Castle Stuart from drying down completely”. The meter was purchased in April 2011 from EnviroMonitors. Since his purchase Chris has been “using the meter

In 1998, Mike Thurow, president of Spectrum Technologies Inc. met with Stennis scientists and learned about a new technology the Center had recently patented: a hand-held plant chlorophyll meter developed from Stennis work on satellite sensors. The result of this is Spectrum’s commercial chlorophyll meter featured enhancements to the NASA invention, such as a built-in ambient light sensor, dual high-power targeting lasers, a data logger, and a hardware encasement with a pistol grip for easy use. Click Here to read Chlorophyll Meters Aid Plant Nutrient Management from NASAs Scientific and Technical Information website.

Laurent Souron is a Research Analyst forecasting supply and demand for the cocoa and coffee markets. He needed “objective, comparable soil moisture measurements to better assess crop potential over time” and purchased a FieldScout TDR100 soil moisture meter after locating EnviroMonitors online.

The TDR100 is used for crop surveys in West Africa and South America. According to Laurent “having objective rather than subjective measurements is a plus when presenting results to outsiders”. He is also finding that “the TDR100 has become a key part of our forecasting operations, it is sturdy and simple to use”.

“We are more than happy with our TDR meter”, he said, and he has already recommended the FieldScout TDR100 to another company to help with their forecasting operations.

Spectrum announces SpectrumWeather.com to view this product's online manual. SpectrumWeather.com, a web access service that enables growers to view current weather conditions from all WatchDog^® 2000 Weather Stations, anywhere an internet connection is available.

The WatchDog Weather Station sends data directly to SpectrumWeather. A direct interface to SpecWare 9 Pro software provides reports, graphs, disease models, and other tools needed to analyze saved weather events – wherever the user may be located.

Unlike other web access services, SpectrumWeather allows users to uniquely label and define external sensors and

Yesterday, 28th May 2009, Jonathan Ray writing for telegraph.co.uk states of English wine 'our best wines are now very good indeed', click here to read his article.

Spectrum manufacture a range of sensors when used with their Grape Alert forecast package can avoid costly disease outbreaks. Add this to degree-day and chill hour tracking for a comprehensive analysis tool.

Find out all about the awesome new Davis EnviroMonitor system.

The easy-to-use, affordable, remote field monitoring system for making critical crop decisions. >Read more