Seedling Sessions: Agriculture Innovation

Kristof Hayes, an early team member at E-Nano, spoke with Thomas Slattery about working as an engineer on the robotics platform and integrations. E-Nano is a robotics, automation and integration business currently providing services in the sports turf industry. They have longer-term plans to explore broader agricultural use cases for their autonomous soil and crop sensing technology. 

In this week's episode, Thomas Slattery spoke with Jim McDougall, Commerical Director at Outfield Technologies about their exciting technology helping top fruit growers around the world.

Jim is hugely passionate about the future of fruit production. In his previous career assessing environmental risk, it became ever more apparent that we need to become more efficient as a species at feeding the population whilst protecting the planet. Whilst there was a lot of talk and good sentiment, action was needed to really drive change.

And Outfield was born. 

At a time of high pressure in the farming industry, Outfield is focussed on helping fruit growers be more productive, more efficient, and more sustainable. To achieve this, Jim and Oli founded Outfield with the ambition of providing growers more precise and accurate knowledge about their orchards. After years of working with growers, researchers, computer vision experts and partners across the industry, Outfield now has a system being used by apple growers across 5 continents to manage orchards with precision, forecast yields with accuracy, and inform the whole supply chain.

Thomas Slattery spoke with Dr Tiffany Wood the Chief Executive Officer of Dyneval Ltd, a company with an award-winning patented technology for precise measurement of semen quality based at the Roslin Innovation Centre. Dyneval was founded in April 2020 by Tiffany and Dr Vincent Martinez, both complex fluid physicists from the University of Edinburgh who have researched the motion of tiny particles at the micron scale for over two decades. The novel technology measures the mean speed and percentage of progressively motile spermatozoa data from the fluctuations of light passing through a sample of semen.

Dyneval’s award-winning Dynescan is a portable instrument for precise measurement of semen quality for bovine, equine, ovine and porcine. Powered by Dyneval’s proprietary software, the Dynescan delivers reliable measurements of the percentage progressive motility (% motility) and spermatozoa’s mean speed (micron/second). Designed for dual-mode operation, the Dynescan allows for visual inspection in addition to automated, objective measurement.

Their automated, precise and user-independent measurement technology can analyse fresh, frozen, or sexed semen within minutes and without the need for any additional equipment. Dynescan requires minimum training, is robust and portable, and can be used in a clinic or lab or by the pen side.

Dynescan technology can help the food-production industry move towards net-zero by making better decisions to optimise production efficiency.

• Assess bull fertility and eliminate poor-quality semen prior to Artificial Insemination
• Make well-informed decisions to enhance herd management
• Increase conception rates by up to 20%
• Increase profits on the average UK dairy farm of £37k /year
• Reduce methane emissions by up to 10%

 Dyneval’s tiered pricing allows users to use the Dynescan according to their needs and seasonal demands, weekly, monthly, or yearly.  Get in touch for more info or to request a demo.

Dr Casey Woodward, Founder of AgriSound, speaks with Thomas Slattery about the company’s use of low-cost listening technology to better understand biodiversity in the field and help farmers and growers to both target interventions and protect pollinators.

AgriSound’s technology utilises bioacoustic algorithms to produce a user interface that shows deficits and offers high-level recommendations. With advice from growers about challenges they face relying on manual observations and what they would want from an automated solution, AgriSound has developed strategies to enhance insect levels, map impacts of agrochemicals and support national governments with data-led policymaking.

By combining acoustic technology with environmental sensors, AgriSound has developed a range of innovative products that can aid in maintaining an optimal pollination environment, necessary for not just the survival of future pollinators, but for farms, gardens, and the planet.

Marina  Curran PhD, Sustainability Manager at Vivent spoke with Thomas Slattery about their exciting crop health diagnostic technology PhytlSigns, which uses plant electrophysiology, and has been dubbed the  ‘Fitbit of plants’ they also talk about the journey for the companies recent B Corp certification.

Vivent’s technology leads to increased yields, improved crop protection effectiveness, and encourages the adoption of environmentally preferable protection solutions – so more food, less chemicals. With recertification every three years, Vivent has embarked on a process that aims at ever higher standards and continuous improvement.   

Vivent was founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Carrol Plummer and Dr. Nigel Wallbridge, who have now applied their information processing and telecommunication system skills to biological networking, with an initial focus on crop monitoring. The pair have worked with leading agricultural institutes, universities, crop protection companies and growers to validate this innovative approach. Vivent’s focus is on high-capital indoor growing operations with plans to move into high-value outdoor crops and then into large volume field crops. More information is available at www.vivent.ch  

Bill Miller, Senior Customer Development Manager of LI-COR, spoke with Les Hurdis about how the organisation aims to transition solutions from research level to producer level, and how they can iterate technologies on a long-term scale.

LI-COR has been around for over 50 years, doing agricultural research and measurements, and partnering with agronomists to better understand plant health. Their products and services address important biological and environmental challenges, such as driving towards optimising crop production for yield and carbon sequestration
L.I-COR is keen to collaborate with both producers and like-minded companies in the Ag Tech industry.

Henry Acevedo, Founder, CTO and CEO of  Fox Robotics spoke with Thomas Slattery about their journey from warehouse robotics into Agri-Tech and adapting their existing skills and knowledge to automated logistics in the berry sector

Henry had some great insights on breaking into the competitive robotics sector, the importance of building the right team, the complexities of developing robotic hardware solutions and the future of farming.

We spoke with Dr Henry Russell of innovative farm service company Envirosystems who supports the agricultural community with sustainable solutions with a focus on the dairy sector.

It was fascinating to discuss their holistic company ethos - the Biocircle - and how this impacts the transition of farms to more sustainable and regenerative systems while staying profitable.

We also spoke about the recent DEFRA Innovations Pathways funded R&D work that they are carrying out in reducing ammonia emissions from slurry stores.

Jimmy Davies, Managing Director of HOPS AgTech spoke with Les Hurdis about how the organisation has moved into software technology to improve the management of labour from the farm and through the whole supply chain.

- Creating HOPS AgTech
- Changing labour and recruitment landscape in farming
- The road to more autonomous farming
- Software to enable anyone in the supply chain better control over the information flow for seasonal and migrant labour
- Partnering with automation and robotics companies to better understand the role of these innovations in the overall labour workflow

This week we spoke with Martin Leahy at Maxon about the use of their mechatronic drive systems in agriculture and particularly in the growing sector of field robotics.

Maxon is a global manufacturing company that specialises in designing DC drives, gearheads and controllers. Their equipment is used everywhere, even on Mars - with over 100 drives on the red planet including the latest Perseverance rover and its companion helicopter. So they are known for reliability and the ability to function in adverse conditions!