Why Targeted Input Application Matters
Getting to Grips with Variable Rate Application
Introduction
Continued financial & environmental pressures on growers across the globe are making it harder and harder to justify blanket application of inputs across your crop. As growers seek to cut costs, whilst continuing to align themselves with consumer expectations of sustainability, the need to be more resourceful with nutrient application has never been more urgent. Deep Planet's Variable Rate Application (VRA) tools are designed to help growers achieve strong, stable nutrient profiles across their site whilst simultaneously cutting costs and reducing the environmental footprint of their business.
Why Thinking About Fertiliser Application Matters
Variable Rate Application maps allow growers to easily segment their sites into three distinct zones based on their nutrient of choice and quantify input savings.
Whether it's grapes, or other high-value produce, targeted application of inputs ensure:
Lower Costs: Only applying fertiliser where needed can reduce application volume by up to 60% (Papadopoulos et al., 2024) and total costs associated.
Increased Sustainability: Limiting excess nutrient application can improve alignment with key certification requirements & reduce risk of run-off.
Higher Yields: Reducing nutrient variation over a site can increase yields by up to 62% (Papadopoulos et al., 2024), ensuring crop quality & consistency.
However, making informed assessments of targeted nutrient application at scale presents a real challenge for growers. Deep Planet’s solution takes the guesswork out of the equation, offering data-driven insights that empower supply chain companies and farmers to make precise decisions.
Deep Planet’s Solution
Our system utilises imagery captured through satellites, analysing the spectral fingerprint of the soil, incorporating topology, climate data etc. to provide insights on:
Soil Nutrient Levels: Monitor levels of Nitrogen, Phosphorus & Potassium at the pixel level, providing an overview of your soil health variation.
Soil Organic Carbon: Monitor SOC levels at the block level and track improvements in Carbon against preselected baseline dates.
Soil Zoning: Automatically generate a zoned map of your area of interest based on relative variation in your nutrient of choice. Calculate fertiliser application by zone and quantify savings.
World Leading Research & Collaboration
Our collaboration with industry partners has led to the development of advanced geospatial AI techniques to accurately estimate soil organic carbon (SOC) and nutrients in agricultural landscapes. By integrating Graph Neural Networks with positional encoders, we've effectively captured the intricate relationships between soil properties and climate variables. This approach enhances the precision of SOC and nutrient assessments, providing deeper insights into carbon sequestration, inter dependency of nutrients and SOC and emissions within agricultural supply chains. Our findings, detailed in the publication "Soil Organic Carbon Estimation from Climate-related Features with Graph Neural Network," underscore the potential of cutting-edge AI in promoting sustainable agriculture.
Read more about our work
Conclusion
By leveraging AI and satellite imagery, Deep Planet has been able to help growers cut costs & improve their environmental stewardship with targeted input application, helping growers move towards a more sustainable, data-driven future for agriculture. As the industry continues to evolve, Deep Planet’s technology will remain instrumental in shaping its trajectory.
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