Netafim had selected Arable's technology after it completed a successful two-year trial spanning four crops over three continents
Netafim to integrate Netbeat platform with Arable Labs’ technology. (Credit: feraugustodesign/Pixabay)
Israel-based irrigation equipment manufacturer Netafim has entered into a partnership with Arable Labs to integrate the latter’s sensing and analysis technology into its digital irrigation management platform Netbeat.
Netafim claims that NetBeat is the first cloud-based agriculture platform to offer integrated automated monitoring, analysis, and control for irrigation and fertigation. The platform helps in integrating external new technologies.
Under the partnership, Arable’s exclusive field sensors and plant metrics will combine with NetBeat platform to support irrigation, fertigation and crop management decisions.
Netafim had selected Arable’s technology after it completed a successful two-year trial spanning four crops over three continents.
The technology offers key crop management insights
The proven technology offers important crop management insights including real-time water consumption and plant development status. It also provides microclimate parameters that can improve decision making and enhance irrigation effectiveness.
Arable stated that its sensing and analytics technology will be integrated into NetBeat’s Dynamic Crop Models algorithms that observe plant development and offer significant recommendations for over 20 different crops.
Netafim digital farming VP 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 Arable brings unique capabilities that will result in high value for farmers.
“On top of that we learned that Arable, while being a very young company, already has a significant track record and a relatively wide install base. This is exactly what we are looking for when choosing our partners for integration.”
The NetBeat platform offers input regarding how much water and nutrients are required at every stage of growth.
Arable further stated that its Mark 2 device will provide recommendations such as daily infield NDVI measurements that can be employed as an alternative for canopy closure. The device will also offer input about significant metric used to calculate crop-specific evapotranspiration rates and schedule precision irrigation.
The Netbeat platform is developed to integrate data easily from various sources, including information about crop status, weather and soil moisture.
The trial further proved that the data collected is of high quality and cost-effective.
Arable CEO Jim Ethington said: “We believe that managing water and plant nutrients more precisely is critical to the future of agriculture around the world.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Netafim, the industry leader in precision irrigation, to deliver on that need to our customers.”