Periodic Reporting for period 5 - PCT (Plant CT - Making Plants Healthier)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2017-04-01 do 2017-12-31
Due to a lack of time, information and appropriate solutions, most farmers are unable to monitor the farmland microclimates when planning their plant protection strategy and consequently are exposed to yield loss and overspraying. Since producing the highest quality crop with a maximized yield requires the real-time measurement and actionable analysis of a large number of plant-related external factors. These factors are meteorological, geological, and human-related. Measuring and processing such parameters is at the core of any decision-support system intending to streamline the production of farmlands. By doing so, it could stop superfluous use of expensive and environmentally harmful chemical agents while reducing yield loss, saving European farmers billions.
The Plant CT™ project intends to address the major challenges of plant protection directives, like cost efficiency or sustainability. The outcome of the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument project is expected to be the release and commercialization of the Plant CT™ solution, a network of compact measuring devices on cultivated areas, which arms agricultural producers with precise, individualized data and recommendations. By deploying devices at several locations it is possible to quantify agronomically important factors and to precisely determine the exact plant disease risk (and other important metrics, such as irrigation) at any particular location on a farmland.
The proof of concept is SmartVineyard™ system developed to increase production yield and reduce wasteful and expensive fungicide spraying in vineyards. Devices upload the measured data onto the server, where scientifically validated algorithms and mathematical models are applied to determine the probability of infection in a given territory. This information can be accessed by the user on any internet connected device, providing farmers with a decision support system with forecasts and alerts on diseases to assist in plant protection.
As the output of the project, a commercialisable smart agriculture system will be developed which not only increases the yield of European agricultural producers, but also promotes a more sustainable and ecologically friendly form of farming throughout the EU.
Professional agricultural producers are in seek of applying a system that helps reducing costs and increasing yield. Remote data access and farmland monitoring are also in demand by agents working lands in multiple areas.
The main advantage of the Plant CT™ system is that it is an easily deployable smart agriculture system which provides a constant source of real time actionable data that helps reduce production costs and increase yield in a user friendly, accessible way. The outcome of the project is a system of small, easily installable, compact and inexpensive precision sensors delivering easy-to-understand actionable information including highly reliable automated diagnostics.
On the software side, the User Interface was designed to support decision making, as well as to display data captured by the sensor units. During the development, principles of User Experience as well as feedback of early adopters were taken into consideration. The user interface was designed upon the preferences of existing customers (early adopters) of Smart Vineyard with many options for visualizing and filtering information. Meanwhile, professional workshops were organized with the aim of reaching agreement with professionals and farmers on testing. The events organized for professionals and farmers helped the company to inform the press and create a database about potential early-adopters. Our cooperation with the academic field has proved to be most effective when bringing a researcher part-time on board, working at the company’s premises on plant disease models.
The Plant CT™ solution allows farmers to gain considerable benefits from a fully reliable decision support system: they get explicit recommendations for action from the decision support system based on prediction models, but also able to drill down into the captured data and make decisions on selecting the proper treatment, gaining precise information on the status of diseases on their land.
As the output of the project, a commercialisable smart agriculture system will be developed which not only increases the yield of European agricultural producers, but also promotes a more sustainable and ecologically friendly form of farming throughout the EU.
Plant CT™’s novelty lies in:
• Scientifically validated models that turn data into actionable disease forecasts and explicit action recommendations
• Highly precise parcel-level data acquisition, microclimate monitoring and weather forecasting
• Data based decision support to optimize yield, quality, and pesticide use
• User-friendly, intuitive interface to display disease predictions with options for filtering and analysis
• ’Easy Deployment’ enabling installation of Plant CT™ systems by a single person, without any IT or engineering skills
The end-user's return on investment on the Plant CT™ system will consist of:
• Primary elements
o The value of the avoided yield loss
o Increased efficiency of pesticide use
o Increased crop quality
• Secondary elements
o Cuts in traveling costs due to remote diagnostics and data access
o Decreasing working hours spent with plant protection
o Increased efficiency of irrigation
o Decreased chemical residues in end-product