All of Netafim’s customers and dealers will now have access to FluroSense’s remote sensing technology and analytics platform
Image: FluroSat’s FluroSense platform showing stressed regions on a farm. (Credit: FluroSat Pty Ltd.)
Netafim, an Israeli irrigation equipment manufacturer, has partnered with FluroSat, an Australian remote sensing technology developer, under which FluroSat’s technology FluroSense will be integrated into the Israeli firm’s cloud-based platform NetBeat.
Combined with FluroSat’s remote sensing and plant metrics, NetBeat platform is now expected to enable easier, more precise and more reliable irrigation, fertigation and crop management decisions for growers.
Through the partnership, Netafim’s customers and especially NetBeat users will be able to access advanced crop monitoring tools including FluroSense, as a standalone monitoring and analysis service to be directly integrated into NetBeat.
The integration is expected to result in site-specific irrigation recommendations with near real-time adjustment of irrigation and fertigation quantities based on the crop conditions assessed by FluroSense.
The agronomic analytics engine of FluroSense offers data regarding the performance and the status of crops, reports the levels of biomass, canopy cover, growth stage and crop development trends for every field or block on a farm.
It also enables the growers to detect crop stress stemming from nutrition deficiency, pest, disease, or irrigation system issues such as leaks and sends alerts to growers.
Netafim digital farming vice president Guy Leventon said: “We designed NetBeat to be an open platform since we believe that joint innovation is the way of the future.
“We have examined dozens of new technologies with the aim of incorporating the best into the NetBeat platform. After comprehensive testing we concluded that FluroSat brings unique capabilities that will result in high value for farmers.”
After conducting a pilot across a range of crops in Netafim key regions including North America, South America, Australia, FluroSense analytics is now being rolled out across Netafim network and will be available to all of its dealers and customers.
FluroSat CEO and founder Anastasia Volkova said: “Our agronomic analytics engine FluroSense was designed to be a ‘translation layer’ that transforms all data available about the crops into conclusive insights for the person or the machine making crop management decisions.
“FluroSense is heavily automated and was designed to work without human in the loop. We are very excited to partner with Netafim to demonstrate what this ‘no touch’ approach can mean for global agriculture in terms of timely precise crop management and irrigation in particular.”