The future of crop intelligence - Remote sensing crop-loss diagnosis Grant uri icon

description

  • Dark Horse Technologies (DHT) is built to solve 'Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger', is the future of precision crop intelligence and we are solving the single greatest challenge to agricultural security, the early detection, diagnosis and targeted intervention of crop-loss events. Farmers lose 30% of cereal yield each year due to crop-loss events such as diseases, pests and weeds. DHT already uses satellite data to monitor field health before recommending drone missions to capture hi-res images from which our proprietary crop model accurately predicts cereal yield and maps crop density. This project will build on our proprietary crop model to also use the drone images to diagnose specific causes of crop-loss in wheat (as in which specific disease or weed a crop is suffering from). A world first technology. The productivity benefit to farmers is three-fold: 1) Increased yield through the early detection, accurate diagnosis and intervention in crop-loss events. 2) Lower cost per tonne to produce: The model can map all crop-loss events in a field, the output file integrates with existing farm machinery to target solutions on a plant-by-plant basis. Early-and-targeted intervention decreases the total amount of chemical required to 'intervene', decreasing total costs whilst also benefiting the environment and health of consumers. 3) The cultivation of crops typically means the near-universal application of harmful chemicals. DHT will enable the early and precision-targeting intervention in crop-loss events, meaning considerably less chemical would be required to treat an issue than is currently the case. The introduction of this technology could not come at a more critical moment, it is a time of global uncertainty and supply chain stress brought on by COVID-19\. At present, the UK is a net cereal importer and many countries are considering banning or restricting exports in-order to ensure domestic supply (e.g. Ukraine - Taras Vysotskiy speaking to Reuters 15 April 2020). Combined with Brexit, this threatens the UK's supply of cereals for both people and livestock. The combination of 'greater yield at lower cost/tonne' will boost the UK's cereal farming productivity by as much as 30%, helping to protect the UK's domestic supply of cereal grains and making the UK a net cereal grain exporter. --ADDITIONAL INFORMAION HERE-- The 'Extension for Impact' (E4I) funding will enable Dark Horse Technologies to: 1) Rapidly complete the model build 2) Conduct Beta/user-acceptance testing with real farmers and agronomists in-the-field 2) Iterate and update the crop model to react to user feedback/real-world results; 3) Build and launch the customer facing web-app / mobile app which enables farmers and agronomists to access, interpret and integrate with DHT's output anywhere. In short, The 'Extension for Impact' funding enables DHT to publicly launch a world-first crop-loss diagnosis product on or before 31 March 2021 instead of the original timeframe of EOY 2021 (9+ months post-project).

date/time interval

  • July 31, 2020 - March 30, 2021

total award amount

  • 74938 GBP

sponsor award ID

  • 69298