Disease prediction and frost protection has been made easy for fruit growers with Leafcrop, a new real-time leaf wetness sensor with frost alert that’s been developed by European agtech start up business Sencrop.
The company, which recently launched its range of connected agro-weather stations in the UK, has developed innovative weather stations using wireless network technology to give real-time support to decision-making on farms. Local agri-environmental data including air temperature, rainfall, humidity, leaf wetness, and wind speed is gathered from individual fields in real-time, and fed into a user-friendly dashboard that provides history, alerts, trends and seven-day forecasts. The dashboard can be accessed on the move via a smartphone app, or on a desktop at the office.
Leafcrop is the next generation of high-resolution, maintenance-free sensors providing ultra-local data to growers, and has already won a silver medal in the 2019 SIVAL Innovation Competition. It measures leaf wetness, temperature and humidity – three key factors required for disease prediction. The data collected is transmitted to Sencrop’s dashboard where it’s immediately available to aid decision making.
Composed of a box and a leaf-shaped sensor, Leafcrop detects even the slightest traces of water and ice on the leaf’s surface, and is able to precisely measure the water retention, evaporation and natural run-off experienced by a real leaf. It is the first sensor to precisely measure leaf wetness, from the very first drop, enabling accuracy levels unseen in previous generations of leaf wetness sensors.
Growers can also benefit from essential frost alerts to aid frost protection. Leafcrop is able to detect wet bulb temperature, a determining factor for frost prediction. Frost alerts can be enabled via the Sencrop dashboard, allowing growers to receive warnings in real-time, enabling preventative action to be taken to protect at-risk crops.
Leafcrop is installed directly in the orchard, vineyard or field and is comprised of three elements – the Leafcrop electrical box which transmits the data to the dashboard, the covered sensors for air temperature and humidity that’s installed in the cropping area, and the leaf sensor that’s installed in the crop canopy. No wired electrical supply is required as the system has a battery that lasts for up to three years.
Sencrop co-founder Martin Ducroquet said local, field-specific weather and leaf wetness data allowed growers to make more informed decisions about crop protection activities.
“Understanding the conditions in the crop canopy is essential for fighting diseases such as downy and powdery mildews, black rot and apple scab,” he added. “For the latter, Sencrop has even developed specific algorithms that incorporate the Mills curve, which defines the minimum amount of wetness for an apple scab spore to cause an infection and initiate symptoms.
“Unlike leaf sensors, which tell you whether a leaf is wet or dry, Leafcrop collects granular data on the level of leaf wetness, the air temperature and the surrounding humidity, which combine to provide a more detailed picture on which to base spraying decisions.
“Through Leafcrop, Sencrop is revolutionising data analysis for all growers by facilitating the collecting of information directly from their orchards, vineyards and fields, and enabling disease and frost prevention in real-time,” Mr Ducroquet said. “We’re entering the UK market at an exciting time and look forward to providing UK growers with the opportunity to better manage their work, reduce spraying activities, and take action at the right moment, as we have for the past two years with growers in 10 countries across Europe. We now have more than 5,000 Sencrop stations in our network and that number’s growing every day.”
Sencrop is committed to making precision farming technology available to all, with Leafcrop on the market for a low up-front cost of £350 (price correct at April 2019), significantly below the cost of previous-generation sensors, and an affordable subscription model to access the dashboard.
For more information visit: https://sencrop.com/en/.
