How AI and Robotics help farmers in pest problem

 

image credit; flickr

Climate change became a serious issue not only for human health but for the crops health also. Now, farmers around the world are facing serious challenges in growing food more effectively, because extreme weather conditions increase the risk of crop damage from insects, fungi, and bacteria.

Pests are a nuisance  and cannot be  completely eliminated,  but  with effective control and management damages caused by pests could be minimized below economic threshold. Smart farming is an efficient approach to combat the problem, where farmers are using artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and computer vision to target pests more effectively and to make farms more productive.

In 2019 the United Nations reported on the pest burden causing crop losses of between 20 and 40 percent of global production each year. Damage from plant diseases, it said, costs the world economy an estimated $220 billion annually, and invasive insects around $70 billion.

Pests are one of the worst enemies of the farmers which damages crops. Oftentimes pesticide drift may result in soil and groundwater contamination, affect fertility and non-target vegetation.AI-enabled system to detect pests use satellite images and compare them with historical data using AI algorithms and detect that if any insect has landed and which type of insect has landed like the locust, grasshopper, etc. and send alerts to farmers to their smartphones so that farmers can take required precautions and use required pest control thus AI helps farmers to fight against pests.

AI and robotic based technologies include soil and crop sensors, satellite and drone monitoring, plus computer vision and AI data analysis to reduce the number of affected plants and increase crop yields.  Moreover, through machine learning, farmers can monitor crops' nutrient levels.

Insect monitoring services and startups,         

UK based insect monitoring service Spotta offers targeted real-time data on invasive species. The company uses internet-connected dry traps to catch red palm weevils that attack date palms, causing more than $1 billion of losses in the Middle East, Africa, and North America each year.

Traps alert plantation workers to trees infested with weevils so they can eliminate them before they cause any real damage. And this targeted approach means less pesticide is used, reducing the impact on other species.

What is the next best thing to manually monitoring your crops?

Not only can FarmSense Smart Traps monitor and classify pests, but they also report vital meteorological conditions to farmers in real-time.

Schedule a demo here: https://t.co/5U1zXYZhCh #FarmSense #AgriFuture pic.twitter.com/euziTy1595

— FarmSense (@FarmSenseInc) May 13, 2022

Similarly the Californian agriculture technology startup FarmSense uses optical sensors and machine learning algorithms trained to find and track insects in real-time. With non-native invasive insect species forecast to increase 36 percent worldwide by 2050, these technologies could give farmers a huge advantage in eco-friendly pest control and food growing.

Precision spot spraying linked to AI is another valuable add-on that aims to minimize pesticide and herbicide use. Spraying entire crops can harm insect pollinators like bees and becomes part of agricultural run-off when it is washed out of soil. But targeting weeds or insects using cameras and directed sprays can vastly reduce chemical use.

In the Czech Republic, scientists at Mendel University in Brno have built a prototype robot that patrols greenhouses and can identify the different stages of insect growth. It then applies just enough insecticide to kill individual pests, working 24 hours a day to keep things under control.

Among Dutch cress growers, the answer to a troublesome moth species is killer drones. Koppert Cress grows its product in chemical-free greenhouses and uses small autonomous drones guided by a camera to kill moths on the wing using their rotor blades. The tiny drone fleet is used alongside traps to keep greenhouses pesticide-free. 

We don’t have tractors, silos, or even soil here. Instead, we grow everything indoors—using robots and AI to do the heavy lifting, while the humans focus on growing the freshest food possible. pic.twitter.com/PBd70lckfq

— 80 Acres Farms (@80AcresFarms) April 14, 2022

Companies like Root AI and 80 Acres Farms are banking on indoor growing and AI-controlled systems as the future of farming. In the case of 80 Acres, its pesticide-free indoor farms are monitored by AI every step of the way. Robots do a lot of the work and computer vision lets them know if crops need more nutrients or if pests are causing damage.

Their efforts are part of what analysts say will be a $2.6 billion AI-farming market by 2025. Reimagining how farming operates will be crucial, says the World Bank – reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss. And technology will play its part in helping farmers improve their all-around crop management.

Conclusion,

Gardeners and farmers across the globe face problems such as unwanted insects and pests eating away crops, unawareness about the right pesticide for their produce, Plants can catch air-borne, water-borne, or soil-borne diseases that may go undiagnosed in the absence of professional help. AI-based equipment and machines, has taken today's agriculture system to a different level, which can detect the real problem and help maintain the greenery. As greenhouses continue to grow in size and human resources continue to dwindle, artificial intelligence and robotics fill a widening gap in the horticultural sector.

Source: Discovery.com