Topcon Positioning Group is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of precision measurement and workflow solutions for the global construction, geospatial and agriculture markets. Topcon Positioning Group, including Topcon Agriculture, is headquartered in Livermore, California, U.S., with a European head office in Capelle a/d IJssel, the Netherlands. Antonio Marzia, the company’s SVP General Manager EMEA & APAC, provides his thoughts on the future of precision agriculture.
The global agriculture industry is at a pivotal moment. While demand for crops continues to grow as the population soars, so too does the need for farming practices to become more sustainable.
Last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) shone a light on the long-term environmental impacts of the agriculture sector, with businesses and 45 governments [Ref. 1] from across the world pledging action and investment towards the protection of nature and a drive towards more sustainable methods of farming.
So, how can farmers reconcile these needs, without risking their ROI?
Environmental impacts When we look at the challenges farms face with improving sustainability, fertilization of crops is a major issue. Around 75 per cent of agricultural land in the EU [Ref. 2] is fertilized by nitrogen-based nutrients, leading to an increase in the output of greenhouse gases. The sad truth is, despite it improving growth and enhancing the productivity of plants, the production and application of fertilizer also has a detrimental impact on the environment overall.
The agriculture sector is the largest producer of nitrogen in the world and emissions of nitrous oxide, the primary greenhouse gas, are increasing [Ref. 3]. Emissions from fertilizers contribute to more than a third [Ref. 4] of the EU’s agricultural greenhouse gases.
Furthermore, the overuse of fertilizer creates issues that go beyond harmful gas emissions. Excessive use can lead to the pollution of local water supplies and damage to fauna and flora in the area. This in turn leads to irreversible destruction of ecosystems, as well as direct damage to the human population through our natural resources.
There’s no escaping it, though – fertilizer is an essential part of farming. What the industry needs is to explore a solution that strikes the right balance: increasing yield to meet demand, while protecting our natural environment. One clear answer lies in better control and measurement.
By looking for solutions that use just the right amount of fertilizer, it is possible to achieve a more sustainable outlook without sacrificing crop yield or creating the poor ROI that many farmers fear.
A recent roadmap [Ref. 5] from international policy group IEA explored the impacts of excessive ammonia production caused through inefficient use of fertilizer. It proposed three possible futures depending on the direction the industry chooses to take. One of these, the Sustainable Development Scenario, explores what could happen should the sector adopt more sustainable technologies and policies. Taking this path, the organization concluded, would put the industry on a positive road aligned with the Paris Agreement and towards Net Zero Emissions by 2050; goals which give hope of a more sustainable future.
Technology is our answer To meet demand, agriculture professionals need to embrace technology in order to gain greater, more precise results from their existing parcels of land. At COP26, 26 nations [Ref. 6] agreed with this assessment and made commitments to invest in the science and technologies needed for a more sustainable approach to agriculture that protects the environment and crops against climate change.
For farmers, an excellent starting point for digitalization is the introduction of crop sensing technologies. By utilizing this technology, farmers can access a consistent stream of data related to crop health and viability. This enables them to actively change and adapt their farming methods in real time, and helps prevent problems such as over- or under-watering and inefficient use of fertilizer. Data gathered through crop sensing technology helps farmers to accurately measure parcels of land and identify the correct amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers needed, helping not only to boost sustainability, but also to save time and money. The technology also allows for ‘on-the-go’ readings, meaning the farmer can scan the crop and carry out the application in the same run for increased efficiency. Alternatively, the technology can be used to scan and collect data during the spraying process, which can later be analysed for comparisons of different crop types and fields.
Crop sensing technologies work by using highly accurate large sensor footprints to detect the canopy reflection and determine chlorophyll content, which correlates to nitrogen concentration in the leaf. This non-destructive, non-contact measurement method provides accurate, stable readings with repeatable values, all without tampering with crops. Due to its non-invasive methods, the technology is compatible with all crops; a universal tool for farmers operating with a variety of crop types.
Improvements to sustainability through technology don’t just stop at crop care solutions though – guidance systems, yield monitoring and even full-scale digital farm management tools are essential for farmers looking to improve their environmental impact.
For example, yield tracking systems are optical sensing, volumetric solutions designed to provide operators with the real-time data collection needed to make intelligent business decisions in the combine cab and afterwards. They include monitoring and mapping of yield, moisture and cut rate, as well as the total weight of crop during harvest. Yield mapping allows farmers to investigate factors affecting the yield or to prescribe variable rate applications of agricultural inputs, which saves them time and money. It also makes farming processes more efficient and effective, significantly reducing reliance on fertilizer, and therefore the impact on the environment.
Through this kind of technological investment, farmers can realize a whole world of benefits, from less fuel consumption to a vastly improved quality and quantity of crop. There’s often been a perception that ‘going green’ will negatively impact a business’ bottom line but, in reality, it can provide a significant ROI.
The future of farming When it comes to digitalization, the agriculture industry has traditionally lagged behind other sectors. It’s become clear, however, that the answer to many of the industry’s sustainability and productivity issues lies in the adoption of new precision agriculture solutions.
Developments in technology over the last decade have helped to improve agricultural processes through digitalization and automation, helping farmers to boost efficiency, profitability and the quality of outputs across a range of farming disciplines. With a younger generation of farmers rising through the ranks – people who have become accustomed to the latest technology in other aspects of their lives and demand the same of their careers – the pressure for the sector to embrace innovation continues to mount. ●
Ref. 1: https://ukcop26.org/nations-and-businesses-commit-to-create-sustainable-agriculture-and-land-use/ Ref. 2: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/food-farming-fisheries/farming/documents/market-brief-fertilisers_june2019_en.pdf Ref. 3: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/10/985/2018/ Ref. 4: https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-agriculture Ref. 5: https://www.iea.org/events/iea-cop26-ammonia-technology-roadmap-towards-more-sustainable-nitrogen-fertiliser-production Ref. 6: https://ukcop26.org/nations-and-businesses-commit-to-create-sustainable-agriculture-and-land-use/
Antonio Marzia
Photo: TopCon
For plant biologists, understanding how plants grow and interact with soil is vital for selecting resilient crops that can efficiently take up water and nutrients. But how do you monitor what is happening underground?
To address this challenge, a team from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has developed a low-cost system for imaging plant growth dynamics, noninvasively and at high throughput.
Unlike other imaging tools, which are costly and stationary, the new system called MutipleXLab, is modular, mobile and, at a low cost, can continuously monitor thousands of seeds, from germination to root development.
“Our system combines high-throughput phenotyping with high resolution, a common bottleneck in plant phenomics,” said Ph.D. student Vinicius Lube. “It has exceptional resolving power at both large field-of-view and high resolution when compared to other optical systems.”
Testing MutipleXLab on Arabidopsis plants to monitor seed germination and root growth provided robust data and precise evaluation of germination index and hourly growth rate between different mutants. The team used computer vision and pattern recognition technologies combined with machine learning to analyze and quantify root growth dynamics.
“The image segmentation models we developed are essential to allow the system to fully operate at high-throughput with minimal human supervision,” explained Lube. “The system’s ability to image and quantify the growth rate of several samples simultaneously allowed us to extract new phenotypes. For example, we could identify faster and slower growth for different plant mutants.”
The system can also dissect differences between mutants and evaluate seed quality in different seed batches.
Plant scientist Ikram Blilou says MutipleXLab is a creative system that allows the capture of dynamic biological processes at high resolution in space and time under challenging environments. “Its power lies in its automated and easy mode of operation combined with low cost,” she said.
They plan to commercialize MutipleXLab and believe it could be a valuable tool for plant biologists, the seed industry, crop scientists and breeding companies. Blilou and Lube have also co-founded a startup website.
“It can be used to test and evaluate the viability of seed batches, to screen for particular phenotypes including germination rates and root length, and to screen mutants or cultivars under various conditions, assessing their response to stresses such as salinity and nutrient deficiency,” said Blilou. “It could also be used to monitor the response of plants to growth promoting substances and beneficial bacteria or resistance to pathogens.” ●
The MultipleXLab combines high-throughput phenotyping with high resolution.
The MutipleXLab.
Testing MutipleXLab on Arabidopsis plants to monitor seed germination and root growth.
Photos: KAUST
A University of Florida researcher has developed AI that helps detect disease in watermelon quickly and accurately.
Yiannis Ampatzidis used spectral reflectance – the energy a surface reflects at specific wavelengths – of plant canopies and machine learning to quickly and efficiently detect downy mildew in several stages of the disease.
Ampatzidis, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) at the University of Florida (UF), said downy mildew spreads like wildfire in watermelon crops.
“If left unchecked, downy mildew can destroy a farmer’s entire crop within days. That’s why it gets the nickname ‘wildfire.’ It spreads rapidly and scorches leaves,” said
Ampatzidis, a faculty member at the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center.
Ampatzidis and his research team successfully detected downy mildew in several stages of severity.
“Our most important result was finding downy mildew in its earliest stage, which is critical to growers’ ability to manage this disease,” he said.
Ampatzidis and his research team developed two methods, utilizing hyperspectral imaging and AI – one in the laboratory and the other using UAVs (drones) for field detection.
Downy mildew does not affect stems or fruit directly. But it can
defoliate the plants, leaving fruit exposed to sun damage, making it unmarketable.
As next steps in his research, Ampatzidis wants to develop a simple and inexpensive drone-based sensor to improve detection of downy mildew in watermelon plants. ●
Yiannis Ampatzidis, a UF/IFAS agricultural engineer at the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center, is shown with drones in the laboratory.
Photo: UF/IFAS
In the future, cameras could spot blackbirds feeding on grapes in a vineyard and launch drones to drive off the avian irritants, then return to watch for the next invading flock. All without a human nearby.
A Washington State University (WSU) research team has developed just such a system, which they detail in a study published in the journal Computer and Electronics in Agriculture. The system is designed to have automated drones available to patrol 24-hours a day to deter pest birds, like European starlings or crows, that cost growers millions of dollars a year in stolen or ruined fruit.
For the study, the team, which included Manoj Karkee, associate professor in WSU’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering and the study’s corresponding author, ran two separate tests: detecting birds and deploying drones automatically. Over a few years, Karkee’s team developed a camera system and algorithm that would find birds and count them as they flew in and out of fields.
The team customized very small drones and deployed them for flight tests on small plots with simulated birds.
Technologically, the system resembles drone package delivery systems. It will be several years before this particular technology would be commercially available for growers because there are still several hurdles, including making sure it works at scale, complies with federal drone regulations, and continues to deter birds even if drones are commonly flying around.
“Birds are really clever,” said Karkee, who is also affiliated with WSU’s Center for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems. “They often find ways around deterrents. We don’t want a system that only lasts for a few months or years before they stop being scared off.”
For now, the birds are scared off just by the motion and whirring noises made by drones. But Karkee said that sounds, like distress calls or predatory bird noises, could be added. Builders could even design special drones for the job.
“We could make drones look like predators, or have reflective propellers that are really shiny,” he said. “All of these working together would likely keep birds away from those vineyards and fields. We need to research that over multiple years to make sure.”
The automation research is the third in a series of three studies concerning drones and bird pests. The first showed that manually operated drones, doing random flights, successfully drive off or keep birds away from vineyards. They found that drones reduced bird counts four-fold.
The second project showed the impact driving off the birds can have on crop yield. Karkee’s team followed up on the fields where they manually drove birds off. Those fields had around 50 percent reduction in damaged fruits.
Karkee plans to meet with growers, technology companies, and other stakeholders to start next steps on working toward a commercially available automated drone system. ●
A manually operated WSU drone flies over a vineyard during tests for bird deterrence and fruit damage assessment.
Photo: WSU Agricultural Automation and Robotics Lab
Precision Planting has launched Radicle Agronomics, a suite of tools for professional agronomists that enable them to focus their time on the agronomic issues their farmer customers are facing.
According to Dale Koch, product manager with Precision Planting,
soil nutrient management is a pressing challenge in modern agriculture. “We created Radicle Agronomics to transform soil nutrient management with precise tools and reliable agronomic data so that agronomist are better equipped to guide farmers to superior outcomes,” he noted.
Radicle Lab, the cornerstone of this new suite of tools, is a fully automated soil laboratory. Its small footprint, self-calibration technology, and the ability to run hundreds of samples unattended allow agronomists to simplify their workflow. The patent-pending Microflow technology built into Radicle Lab removes all human touches which occur during the traditional laboratory process, giving
agronomists the confidence to produce a precision soil analysis in minutes without lifting a finger.
“Radicle Lab is a result of six years of development, dozens of pending patents, and a large team of scientists and engineers all working together,” Koch said.
Also included in the suite of products is GeoPress. The tool mounts on any field-ready vehicle and automatically blends and stores the soil sample in a geo-referenced, reusable container. These full containers are then returned to Radicle Lab where they are loaded into the system, associated with the field location, and analyzed for soil nutrients.
To complete the suite, a cloud-based software package connects all steps of the field-to-lab process so agronomists can deliver nutrient management recommendations to their clients.
“Radicle Agronomics will play a transformative role in the way agronomists and farmers manage their crop nutrient needs for the decades to come,” said Bryce Baker, marketing manager. ●
Precision Planting has launched its new Radicle Agronomics soil sampling system.
Pixxel, an emerging leader in earth-imaging technology, announced an early adoption partnership with Australian cloud-based agritech company DataFarming. Using Pixxel’s hyperspectral dataset, DataFarming will be able to monitor crop health at new speeds and greater resolutions compared to the multispectral imaging on behalf of tens of thousands of farmers.
The images from Pixxel’s growing constellation of satellites provide 8x more information and 50x better resolution than existing in-market options. The images allow for in-depth analysis of plant and soil biophysical and biochemical properties, allowing farmers to track these properties over the course of the growing season to improve their crop performance.
“This partnership with DataFarming will demonstrate how hyperspectral satellite imagery will revolutionize agriculture by giving farmers access to a new caliber of analytical tools powered by insights from space,” said Awais Ahmed, Pixxel co-founder and CEO.
According to Tim Neale, managing director at DataFarming, the company has been well serviced by multispectral data for over 20 years. “In fact, we have 28,000 farms on the DataFarming platform who access it on a regular basis. However, when we want to dig deeper, there are two main issues: spatial resolution and spectral resolution,” he noted.
“As we move into the age of automation and increasing farm size, technology is going to need to fill the gap of determining crop issues earlier; and this is where hyperspectral data and parallel research comes in. And this is likely the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as to what’s possible with regularly captured, high spatial and spectral resolution data.” ●
Syngenta has signed a licensing agreement with UK-based HL Hutchinsons (HLH) to supply agronomists and farmers with an advanced soil mapping and sampling service initially in continental and Eastern Europe.
It will be marketed under the name Interra Scan and enables agronomists and growers to make
better informed decisions for crop management and soil stewardship.
Interra Scan offers high-resolution soil mapping up to 27 layers of information, providing growers with precise information on soil health.
“It allows growers to understand the texture, nutrient and carbon content of their soils in order to optimize nutrition and carbon capture,” said
Mark Hall, head of sustainable and responsible business EAME. “Interra Scan takes over 800 data reference points per hectare, showing more details and geospatial differences than other mapping techniques such as drones, satellites or grid sampling. Interra Scan can be described as the equivalent of an all-round medical check-up for humans, but for soil.”
According to Alexandra Brand, regional director EAME, in the past, growers would treat the entire field in the same way. “With Interra Scan, they know exactly what to apply where and how much of it, making the most of precision technology,” she noted. “As an additional benefit, growers can optimize input costs on fertilizers, seeds and lime which is
even more important in the current economic situation.”
The in-field process of collecting data includes two steps: First, the soil is scanned with gamma-ray detection technology by SoilOptix to map all of the common nutrient and physical soil properties and physical soil samples are collected. The raw scan, soil data and soil samples are then combined and processed to produce up to 27 high-definition soil property layers. Growers have easy on-the-go access via a digital platform to view the results in a unique soil properties map and develop variable rate application maps for their crop input applications. ●
Muddy Machines, the agtech and robotics company that helps automate crop harvesting, announced a new round of seed funding of £1.5m.
The company’s technology allows farmers to precision harvest crops like asparagus. Its Sprout robot can
drive through fields harvesting accurately for up to 16-hours a day with no need for breaks and no decline in performance.
The new round of funding will be used to strengthen the company's engineering team and build capacity to cope with more widespread adoption of its technology. The
areas that the company will focus on include building a small herd of Sprout robots for the 2023 asparagus harvest season and generating initial revenues; continuing with the development of different crop harvesting capabilities; and planning production of the next generation of lightweight, battery-powered Sprout robots.
This latest round of funding was led by Regenerate Ventures , which specializes in investing in technologies that help farmers produce food with less impact on the environment. It was supported with participation from Ponderosa Ventures, Jude Gomilla, Thrive/SVG Ventures, Science Angel Syndicate and others.
Muddy Machines was founded in 2020 by Christopher Chavasse and Florian Richter with a vision to sustainably solve labour issues in farming with robots. The company has since won nearly £2.5m in grant funding from Innovate UK and DEFRA. ●
Sprout uses the latest in deep learning technology to detect and delicately pick asparagus spears according to growers' specifications.
Photo: Muddy Machines
Intelligent Growth Solutions, based in Dundee, UK, has refined its modular system over the last ten years, consisting of pairs of Growth Towers which come in 6, 9, or 12-meter-high variants. New AG International’s Editor-in-Chief, Luke Hutson put the questions to Dave Scott, CTO and Founder to learn more.
The word “solutions” is in the name of your company. Going back to the foundation of the company, what were the solutions that one of your founders was in need of? I understand it was a long list! IGS was founded back in 2013 with the ambition of solving a number of key challenges my co-founder, Henry Ackroyd, who is a real farmer, had identified as facing the vertical and traditional farming industries. My background is in heavy industrial automation, and he saw the potential to harness that to come up with a solution that would revolutionise the indoor growing market.
He had been growing crops for Michelin starred restaurants for many years, but was frustrated by the lack of control growing in polytunnels or greenhouses gives. He wanted to find a way to reliably deliver the very best quality crops 365 days a year. He had a pretty extensive list of what he was looking for too: the solution had to be scalable, automated, energy efficient and able to be expanded, maintained and operated simultaneously.
It was a daunting challenge, but I’m very proud that we’ve been able to realise all his requests with our technology.
Dave Scott, CTO and Founder of Intelligent Growth Solutions
From that list, how did IGS grow into what it is today and what technology is core to its offering? We’ve spent nearly ten years refining our technology to allow us to give customers a solution that reliably delivers consistency, increased yields and improved quality. Our modular system consists of pairs of Growth Towers which come in 6, 9, or 12-meter-high variants with a fully automated growing environment that the grower can control remotely using a web-based app.
Research and development continue to be a priority for the business and in 2018, we opened Scotland’s first vertical farm, our Crop Research Centre in Dundee. This site allows us to blend expertise across engineering, crop science and agronomy disciplines to continue to refine and advance our technology.
And in terms of differentiation in the market place, your technology is expandable while staying operational - does that summarise it? Our technology has been designed with simplicity at its heart which is why it has been designed in a modular and scalable format. We want our customers to be able to expand their operations in line with market demand without impacting current operations. Lots of the individual elements of our vertical farms have been proven in other industries but are brought together in innovative ways. This means that the technology is easy and cost-effective to run and maintain, regardless of where in the world a customer happens to be based.
Perhaps you can also make the distinction for people not familiar with your industry: sterile atmosphere or a controlled atmosphere - what's the difference? IGS vertical farms operate using what we call Total Control Environment Agriculture (TCEA). Put simply, this means we give farmers precision control over every element of the growing environment from the amount and spectrum of light a crop receives at a particular point in its growth cycle, right through to the water, nutrition, airflow and temperature.
When you enter an IGS vertical farm you do so via an airlock which uses positive pressure to reduce the risk of you carrying anything that could potentially be harmful to the crops inside. This forms our first line of defence against pests and disease. Using other, similar and simple methods has meant that we don’t need to use pesticides of fungicides in our systems.
Crucially, the environment isn’t a completely sterile one. We believe in using competitive exclusion to our advantage, where plant and human pathogens are denied a niche by having a robust microbial community. If an environment is sterile, it is difficult to maintain, and when contamination does occur, it can be catastrophic! In addition, plants don’t develop to maturity particularly well in sterile conditions.
Control requires data - and data can be overwhelming. I understand you have a number of software engineers on the team. What are the main challenges they are dealing with? At the beginning of this year, we actually launched a whole department within IGS to look into just this. IGS vertical farms are operated using our Growth Tower Management System which determines optimal recipes of weather and manages the operation of the farm: lighting, watering and ventilation as well as applying nutrition. Data is collected continuously throughout this process, and that’s where the data applications team comes in. We want to use the insights that data can bring to make iterative adjustments to the growing environment by harnessing machine learning [ML] and artificial intelligence [AI]. The nature of people is to chase the best result. With complex systems, like plant growth, this is not the best approach. There will be dips which are followed with a much higher result in the attribute you are trying to find. This is where AI and ML become very useful tools. We’re still at the beginning of this journey, but it’s looking really exciting.
IGS has a strong partnership with the James Hutton Institute and is busy conducting various trials - could you elaborate a little on this relationship and the type of research you are conducting? Our Crop Research Centre, which is the home of our crop science team, is located on the Hutton’s Invergowrie site just outside Dundee. Over the years, we’ve worked closely with the Hutton’s experts on a broad range of projects, from looking at how seed potatoes respond to growing in a controlled indoor environment through to trials looking at soft fruit or tree seedling production.
We are currently in the process of adding an additional two Growth Towers to the site, which will allow even greater scope for collaboration as we move forward.
Around 5 years ago, IGS committed to being a technology vendor rather than a grower - what's the thinking behind this strategy? Unlike the majority of our competitors, we don’t grow any crops commercially. We blend our engineering, crop science and agronomy skills to build the best technology to allow our customers (the growers) to succeed.
Everything our crop science team grows at our Crop Research Centre is either for our own research and development or for customer trials. We believe that by attempting both to grow crops commercially and continue to develop our technology, we would be distracting focus from we’re really good at: designing and manufacturing the very best vertical farming technology that allows our customers to deliver high quality, fresh and nutritious products to consumers all year round.
You've had success exporting to many global markets - what do you think has enabled this from a business point of view? Does this link back to the previous question in some way? There are lots of factors that have contributed to this. Growing awareness of climate change, rising global population levels, and the impact of COVID-19 and Brexit on supply chains are just a few of these, and have meant that food security is a bigger topic of conversation than ever before. We’re seeing a growing interest in diversifying traditional methods of growing as a way to support agriculture.
Looking to the possible link with biological products - if you grow tree saplings in a vertical farm in coir substrate, for example, do you see a possible use of some type of biological input to help the sapling establish in soil once planted out? (Or indeed usage while still in the coir substrate) IGS is actively researching novel substrates and substrate amendments for use in our Growth Towers, whether to improve crop productivity during production or for post-production benefits, to pass on that knowledge to our customers. It is a very interesting area to explore, especially with the potential to harness academic insight into the microbiome and plant-microbe interactions within total controlled environment agriculture. However, we are still very much in the early phases of our investigation and do not currently recommend any specific biological products or regime for our system.
And saving a big question to the end - where is the future of vertical farming going? There is obviously much talk at the moment around food prices, building more resilience in food production systems. Between the claims and the hyperbole, where do you feel vertical farming will make its greatest contribution? I’d be in the wrong job if I wasn’t excited about the future of vertical farming! We need to be realistic though, it’s not a magical solution to the challenges facing global agriculture and our food supply chains. Vertical farming will never replace traditional farming: instead, the two can work in tandem, complementing one another. We tend to think of this as a hybrid model. In this way, vertical farms grow starter plants for fields or greenhouses that are healthy and guaranteed to be disease and pest-free. Where vertical farming producers grow full-cycle seed to harvest crops, these would replace expensive and carbon-heavy imports. ●
