Just one of the many challenges to productive agriculture and horticulture, is being able to quickly gather accurate information about threats, or yield limitations to cultivated plants and crops. The threats maybe insects, nutrient or water deficiencies and weeds. The invasions or deficiencies can be over whole or isolated areas, or individual plants. In many cases gathering this information can be a labour intense, demanding and time consuming job, especially if the growing area is hard to access due to dense plantings, sloping and or rough terrain leaving the only option on foot. 

On many occasions in difficult access situations, the only option, until now, was to treat a whole area with herbicide, insecticide or fertiliser. Treating a whole area to eradicate a small problem often results in a small return, but; what now can be an avoidable cost.

Proagco Option

How much easier would it be to be able to gather all the information relating to insects, diseases, nutrients and water, over an area of 1 to 20 Ha in less than an hour? Then 20 minutes later produce a map that shows (to an accuracy of 2-4 cm) what each problem is and where it is.

 But that’s not the end of it, let’s say that one tenth of the area needs treatment and that treatment could be completed between 2 to 4 hours later the same day with a 30% saving on herbicides/fertiliser/pesticide. This is the type of result you can expect from the PROAGCO productive agriculture proposition.

Case Study

A small Citrus orchard covered an area of 1.5 hectares, but was located in rugged hills where the trees were planted in uneven density and had grown to different heights of between 3 and 5 metres. Previously it took three days for three workers to manually spray the entire orchard. By using our UAVs to firstly identify the extent and location of infected trees, followed by the application of chemicals, the time was reduced to less than 6 hours.

Additionally, by accurately controlling the discharge rate, droplet size and spraying width, the atomisation spraying technology ensured that pesticide was uniformly deposited onto each side of the leaf without overdose or overspray.