USA: The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) has announced a two-year research collaboration with IBM to improve the yield of sugarcane in Thailand.
NSTDA and IBM, with domain knowledge support from Mitr Phol, the world’s third largest sugar producer and the largest in Asia, will pilot an intelligent dashboard and mobile application to enable experts to access insights on crop health, soil moisture, pest and disease infestation risk, expected yield, and commercial cane sugar (CCS) index by leveraging the world’s most accurate weather data from The Weather Company and industry-leading AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics capabilities.
The Agronomic Insights Assistant is being developed by IBM researchers and is based on the IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture and the IBM PAIRS Geoscope. These technologies integrate intelligent geospatial-temporal data (such as multispectral crop images captured by multiple satellites, soil data and digital elevation) and agronomic data (crop health, soil moisture level, pest/disease risk forecast, yield and commercial cane sugar index) with precise forecasts models from The Weather Company.
This data is then combined with local sensing technology customized and enhanced for sugarcane farming in Thailand by NSTDA, and rich agronomic domain knowledge from Mitr Phol to provide actionable insights on water and nutrient stress, pest and disease risk, and agriculture production yield and crop quality index.
