AgroScout's solution helps to precisely and autonomously detect, identify, and monitor diseases, pests, and other agronomic problems in field crops
The AgroScout team together with representatives of Kibbutz Yiron and The Trendlines Group gathered for the investment signing ceremony. (Credit: PRNewswire / AgroScout)
The Trendlines Group portfolio company AgroScout has secured $3m funding for its artificial intelligence (AI) based solution for sustainable crop protection.
AgroScout has completed an investment round, which was led by Kibbutz Yiron and participated by other investors such as Exit Valley crowd-funding platform Agriline and The Trendlines Group.
The funding round also included grants from the Israel Innovation Authority and the BIRD Foundation.
AgroScout’s solution incorporates external data gathered by drones along with AI software, deep learning and computer vision to precisely and autonomously detect, identify, and monitor diseases, pests, and other agronomic problems in field crops.
Agronomists generally conduct manual and visual checks in different parts of the field every few days to minimise the spread of disease in fields. This process facilitates only limited coverage, making to detect diseases at later stages when the disease gets increased.
AgroScout’s solution allows decreasing the amounts of chemicals used to treat disease
The company’s solution enables to significantly decrease the amounts of chemicals used for the treatment of disease.
AgroScout is said to offer an affordable and easy-to-use solution based on user-generated content, as its system depends on off-the-shelf low-cost equipment, such as smartphones and small commercial drones.
AgroScout CEO Simcha Shore said: “The investment from a strategic investor such as Kibbutz Yiron, an agribusiness with a deep understanding of the sector’s needs, is a vote of confidence in our technology and approach.”
In December 2019, the company secured a conditional grant of $1m from The BIRD Foundation for the project between AgroScout and Bird Stop, a docking system technology, to create a fully autonomous solution for the field.
AgroScout and Birdstop aim to deploy this autonomous solution for a large North American potato processor in this summer. The company has also started commercial sales in the US, Latin America and Israel in parallel to its pilot programmes.
AgroScout is a member of Oracle for Startups, an initiative launched to support entrepreneurs and innovators across the world. It is also an early adopter of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Science.