Artificial Intelligence improves field irrigation

Aerospace giant Airbus has partnered with Agrimetrics, the Agri-food Data Marketplace, to try and address agronomic challenges using artificial intelligence and satellite data. Improving irrigation is a focus area.

AI was trained to analyse satellite imagery and return 15 attributes. These include Leaf Area Index (LAI), which can be combined with other Agrimetrics data to calculate water soil balance and plant water stress.

“Getting field water balance right is essential for producing a healthy crop,” says Dr Matthew Smith, Agrimetrics Chief Product Officer. “This data will enable users to develop more accurate estimations of a field’s water balance in near-to-real-time. This will help growers decide when and where to irrigate.”

Dr Matthew Smith

CPO, Agrimetrics

Agrimetrics are pitching their solution at researchers and agri-tech, as well as the rapidly growing digital agronomy sector. They hope to catalyse the development of tools and insights that deliver value to growers in a sustainable way.

“Both traditional farm advisors and new digital services are looking for ways to increase their profitability by delivering more value to their customers in innovative ways,” says Anna Woodley, Agrimetrics Head of Sales. “What we are doing with Airbus is providing these organisations with the data streams, platform and data science expertise they need to develop new products and get those products to market quickly.”

Satellite data has been used to improve farm irrigation before. A 2015 paperpublished in Frontiers in Natural Sciences evidenced a 10% water and energy saving on farms in Austria. More recently, The European Space Agency reported savings of up to 30%. Agrimetrics claim they make the data needed to realise these benefits more easily accessible and affordable.

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Treat water like a pesticide?

‘wHen2gO’ is an example of this model in operation. The project saw BASF partner with Agrimetrics to develop an application that provided growers with guidance on when to spray. Their goal was to reduce chemical run-off into nearby waterways, whilst increasing product efficacy.

To provide this guidance, wHen2gO analyses data from a variety of sources, including satellite data, the UK Met Office and The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). Louis Wells, Solutions Manager at BASF, emphasises the role of Agrimetrics in accelerating the project by pre-linking the data and providing it in an easily usable format.

“I think our work with BASF is more relevant than it may seem,” concludes Anna. “Water scarcity is already an issue in many countries; even in the UK, last year we saw water abstraction restrictions across East England. I think we are approaching a time when we will need to justify and evidence our use of water in the same way as we do our use of fertilisers and pesticides. Improving the sophistication of our management practices today could be key to avoiding regulation and restriction tomorrow.”

Anna Woodley

Head of Sales,

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About Agrimetrics

Agrimetrics is the food and farming sector’s Data Marketplace. We enable organisations to safely share and monetise their data, whilst making it easier for data-consumers to access the information they need. Our goal is to help create a more productive and sustainable food system by enabling next-generation solutions as quickly and affordably as possible.

We are one of four centres for agricultural innovation founded with an initial investment from Innovate UK. Our founding partners are NIAB, SRUC, Rothamsted Research and The University of Reading. We have strategic partnerships with Airbus and Microsoft and are a participant in Microsoft’s prestigious AI for Earth programme.

The four centres
The Agri-Tech Centres are a unique collaboration between Government, academia and industry created to drive greater efficiency, resilience and wealth across the agrifood sector. A £90m investment from the UK’s strategic innovation agency (Innovate UK) is enabling the Centres to harness leading UK research and expertise as well as build new infrastructures and innovation. They include CHAP (Crop Health and Protection), CIEL (Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock), Agri-EPI (Engineering and Precision Technologies), and Agrimetrics.

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