There is no question spot sprayers are a hot topic in agriculture right now. As Scott Garvey reports in his article in our February 7, 2023 issue of Grainews, a new robotic spot sprayer called Solix from Solinftec, which is headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, and in West Lafayette, Ind., could be available to Canadian farmers by the end of the year.
There’s no doubt more are to come — something Tom Wolf talked about at the Manitoba Agronomists Conference I attended in Winnipeg, Man., in December. Wolf is a sprayer expert and scientist at Saskatoon-based Agrimetrix Research and Training and is known as The Nozzle Guy, so he knows a few things about spot sprayers.
During his presentation “Are Spot Sprays the Future of Pesticides,” Wolf put spot spraying right up there in his list of top three transformative technologies he has seen during his career, along with the development of pulse width modulation and the air induction nozzle.
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Wolf noted brown-on-brown spraying technology has been around since the 1970s, with significant improvements in the 2000s. But he said it is the latest innovations in green-on-green spot spraying that have the ag world abuzz these days. In his words, “green-on-green is where the action is.”
Green-on-green builds on green-on-brown spot sprayers that detect the colour green or chlorophyll within plants to pinpoint weeds on fallow ground. Green-on-green technology uses computer algorithms to visually detect where weeds are within a crop and selectively spray them.
Wolf listed some of the main contenders he sees in the green-on-green spot spraying space. They included John Deere (John Deere’s See and Spray Ultimate system was featured in the May 31, 2022, issue of Grainews) and the Basf/Bosch/Agco partnership (featured in the February 2, 2022, issue of Grainews). There were also three companies based in France — Exxact Robotics (featured in the February 15, 2022, issue of Grainews), Carbon Bee and Bilberry — and two in Israel, GreenEye Technology (featured in the March 1, 2022, issue of Grainews) and Taranis.
Precision AI
It was great to see a western Canadian company — Precision AI — on that list as well. The Regina-based startup is working on developing what it calls the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered agricultural drones for plant-level herbicide applications at broad-acre scale. That has caught the attention of major players like John Deere, which just last month named Precision AI as one of eight companies to take part in its 2023 Startup Collaborator program. The green brand launched the initiative in 2019 as a way to help John Deere enhance precision technology in its agriculture and construction equipment.
The announcement in January follows a highly celebrated year for Precision AI. Last October, it received a Rising Star of the Year award in recognition of its excellence in hardware, software, platforms and applications for edge computing (edge computing refers to the practice of capturing, storing, processing and analyzing data near the client, rather than in a remote location) at the annual Edge Computing World conference held in Silicon Valley. Precision AI’s precision spray drone system also took home the Farmers’ Choice award at the Agri-Trade Equipment Expo held in Red Deer, Alta., last November, and the company won numerous other awards in 2022 as well.
Precision AI says participating in John Deere’s 2023 Startup Collaborator program will enable the company to build on its impressive achievements last year.
“A year-long collaboration opportunity with John Deere allows us to take this momentum in technology development and market adoption to the next level,” Precision AI stated in a January news release.
“We envision global opportunity for our solutions in agriculture. From smallholder to large-scale broad-acre farming, there is opportunity to leverage high speed, edge AI-based drone technology for precise crop production decisions. By leveraging our unique drone and AI advantages with the equipment being used around the world, we aim to find incremental improvement and utilization of this data and equipment to supplement the actions already being performed. Further chemical input savings at the right time on top of what John Deere is already capable of is just one of these outcomes.”
Precision AI isn’t the only one advancing green-on-green technology in this country, as firms like Bilberry (which is in the process of being acquired by U.S equipment and precision ag company Trimble) are working on training computer algorithms to identify and target the weeds found on farms in Canada.
There clearly is a lot of action around green-on-green technology these days, and it’s an exciting time —not only for those involved in developing the latest spot sprayers but also for farmers who love innovative gadgets (and who doesn’t?) who are keeping a keen eye on what’s happening in this space.
Take care,
Mark
