A new collaborative project is aiming to use precision farming technology and artificial intelligence to help reduce blackgrass issues in UK.
The team comprises experts from Bosch, BASF Digital Farming, Chafer Machinery and Rothamsted Research to work. Together they have been awarded a grant of more than £1.4M from Defra and Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, under the Farming Innovation Programme – Small R&D Partnership Projects.
Technical details
Using the Bosch Smart Spraying camera technology and software, Chafer will design innovative boom sprayers to detect, identify and map blackgrass at different growth stages within cereal crops across a farm. The smart sprayer technology will be tested on commercial farms selected from the Rothamsted BlackGrass Research Initiative (BGRI).
Agronomists from Rothamsted will label the images and will support Bosch in training algorithms to recognise blackgrass in cereal crops. This information will then be processed and analysed by BASF Digital Farming and delivered to its advanced xarvio Digital Farming Solutions crop optimisation platform.
In the platform, the information will be used to map infield populations to support the development of integrated weed management plans for targeted
blackgrass control.
The team says that by doing so, blackgrass problems should reduce in severity and the ambition is, with enhanced mapping, to improve sustainable blackgrass management programmes.
Reduced herbicides
Additionally, beside a superior performance in blackgrass control, the
project could result in reduced herbicide volumes sprayed in-field. This
would minimise unintended direct consequences on other organisms and reduce the potential for leaching into other vulnerable ecosystems, such
as waterways.
Exciting solutions
“At Bosch we’re constantly looking for solutions to the challenges people face and it’s particularly exciting when we see a way to develop new technologies to solve a problem,” said Bharath Jayakumar, innovation lead at Bosch UK. “We believe our sensor, software and AI technology can make a difference for UK farmers and will help them to target blackgrass better in their fields.”
Daniel Ebersold, head of digital farming project house (Smart Machinery), BASF Digital Farming, added: “We are committed to helping UK farmers optimise crop production. By working together on this important project our shared aim is to find an innovative solution using smart farming technologies, agronomic expertise and artificial intelligence that will measurably reduce the impact of blackgrass infestation over time.”
