Greeneye Technology, FBN Partner to Test AI-Enabled Precision Spraying Technology

Greeneye's goal, he continued, is to "massively reduce (farmers') cost of herbicides and get much better efficacy rates that ultimately translates into improving productivity. (What) we're looking to do is offer a package that gives farmers access to the best products in the market and apply them precisely with our system."

Greeneye is an aftermarket system, entirely agnostic to the machine it's mounted to. It can be integrated onto any brand or size of commercial sprayer. It is a dual-spraying system with two lines of nozzles enabling farmers to apply residual herbicides on a broadcast basis while applying non-residual herbicides precisely on weeds. Cameras mounted directly onto the sprayer capture images at a rate of 40 frames per second, enabling rapid detection and classification of weeds down to the species level, Greeneye said.

Utilizing Greeneye's proprietary data sets and algorithms, the system calculates the amount of herbicide required and sprays it directly onto the weeds, leaving nearby crops unaffected.

Precision spraying can be carried out at the same travel speed as broadcast spraying, 20 kilometers per hour (12.4 miles per hour), working day or night. The company said its Greeneye in-field visioning system reduces chemical usage by 78%, reduces herbicide costs by 50% -- those with an 95.7% accuracy rate in treating weeds.

"We (also) can offer multiple insights to farmers, not just about weeds but multiple other issues in the field" down to the plant level, Bocher said. Next-generation Greeneye technology will be capable of applying fungicides and micronutrients, the company promises.

FBN's On-Farm Field Trials Program was created to help product developers connect directly with farmers.

"We're taking this first step this year to do these on-farm trials/demos. We're really excited about that and optimistic for what could come after that," said Matthew Meisner, vice president of R&D and data science at FBN. "We don't know exactly what that will look like yet. I would say at a high level, though, our mission and goal are to bring products and services to our members that help them be more efficient, more profitable, more successful."

For 2022, Greeneye is employing a "spraying as a service" approach, commitments fulfilled by a Greeneye fleet of machines. Next year will be different. "We have significant pre-orders for 2023 for farmers who want to retrofit their machines. Greeneye is also working with commercial sprayers that Bocher said, "have fleets of machines providing customer application services at scale."

Greeneye technology has caught the attention of investors. In December 2021, Greeneye closed a $22 million funding round led by international venture capital firm, JVP, and including investments from Syngenta and AGCO.

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @DMillerPF

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