CropX Partners With Sensor Manufacturers and Creating A Simple System to Pinpoint Irrigation Using Crop Temperatures

By
Khardi J Mukuyu
CropX has announced that sensor manufacturers Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Lab IX (a Flex technology accelerator) have invested in its company. The strategic partnerships will allow the company to accelerate product development and rapidly expand market adoption.

“The CropX adaptive irrigation platform has become a core component of our business model and has had an enormous impact on our bottom line – in water and fertilizer cost savings, as well as in crop yield improvement. The ability to cost-effectively automate the entire irrigation process – from data collection to actual irrigation – is a game changer, as leaders in the agriculture industry look to increase sustainability, productivity, and crop yield,” says Jon-Michael J. Nahon, managing principal and head of market operations for Integrated Ag Financial. “With CropX, farms can start small and quickly scale due to the platform’s flexibility.

We’ve been able to rapidly increase sensor usage across hundreds of acres of our fields in just one growing season, and we are fully automating our entire irrigation system across thousands of acres this year.”

The company's proprietary science helps farmers better understand water usage across their fields. Soil sensors can increase crop yields while simultaneously cutting water usage by one third.

“CropX gives farmers a fast and simple way to know the exact water needs and the best irrigation plan of different parts of each field,” says Jan Westerhues, investment partner at Robert Bosch Venture Capital. “Its pay-as-you-go service model makes it easy for farmers to quickly test the platform, realize its value, and scale across more fields, crops, and farms.”
Second-Generation Sensors

CropX is also unveiling a new version of its soil sensors that drastically reduce installation time. Farmers can now install the screw-like sensors in less than four minutes – a dramatic reduction from the 20-minute installation that the first generation of CropX sensors met when they hit the market six months ago.

Sensors retail for $380 per sensor, with an annual subscription starting at $220 per sensor accessible via any smartphone.

“Moisture sensors are the most important part of the soil-monitoring mix, but the options to date have been complicated, cumbersome, and extremely expensive.

The farming industry has been waiting for an easy and reliable way to quickly access soil-moisture data,” says Below Ag Service soil consultant Damon Dowdy.

“I’ve seen CropX in action, and it worked flawlessly. Farmers will readily embrace the CropX technology once they realize that it can deliver immediate ROI.”

To see the new sensor in action, visit cropx.com/product.
Beyond Row Crops

“We want to make adaptive irrigation a global endeavor, and you can only do that by moving labs into the soil and the resulting data into the cloud,” says CropX CEO Isaac Bentwich. “More efficient water usage should start on the farm, but there is no reason for it to end there. We need to make better use of our water supply across the board – from millions of acres of commercial row crops and thousands of orchards and organic farms, to golf courses and the smart homes of the future. Adaptive irrigation has the potential to save billions of gallons of water each year, while driving better outcomes for farmers, business, and consumers alike.”

Creating A Simple System to Pinpoint Irrigation Using Crop Temperatures
USDA-ARS
Kendall DeJonge’s mission is to take plants’ temperatures.

But the crops, like corn, that he is working with don’t have to open up and say, “ahh.” Instead, DeJonge employs an infrared radiometric thermometer (IRT).

This is a simple point-and-detect tool that any farmer could own. The USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS) engineer, who works out of Colorado, is developing a simple way that farmers can use IRT to pinpoint when a crop needs to be irrigated.

DeJonge is basing his work on research that confirms thirsty plants get hot. So a simple method of taking crop canopy temperatures could be a boon to farmers. And, DeJonge points out, IRTs could be placed on posts in fields, center pivot irrigation systems, or even a drone to gather temperature readings on crops. Scientists can interpret the IRT data by using one of several indices, including the commonly used crop water stress index (CWSI).

Developed by ARS scientists in the early 1980s, the CWSI requires knowing air temperatures and humidity levels to calculate a “vapor pressure deficit,” in addition to knowing the canopy temperature. Although accurate, CWSI is fairly technical to use.

DeJonge and his team of researchers have developed two new indices which are simpler to employ than CWSI. These formulations include the degrees above non-stressed (DANS) index and the degrees above critical temperature (DACT) index. DeJonge’s team found that DANS and DACT were just as effective as CWSI at determining water stress. Not only is either calculation far simpler to use but also crop canopy temperatures need to be taken just once a day to be accurate.

DeJonge is now working on refining the calculations to establish water needs of specific crops under different scenarios. With his crop water-coefficient data, farmers could use handheld or drone-mounted IRTs to calculate water needs over extensive areas.

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