technology Archives - Agri-EPI Centre

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The Merage DeserTech Competition

Innovate UK and Agri-EPI Centre are pleased to announce their support for the 4th Merage DeserTech competition, an annual event aimed at accelerating innovative technologies addressing global desert challenges. This competition takes place in Be’er Sheva, Israel, and is dedicated to advancing sustainable solutions for arid climates. 

DeserTech’s vision is to establish Be’er Sheva and the Negev region as a prominent global hub for desert technologies. This initiative leverages existing technological and policy research resources, including Ben Gurion University and its Institutes for Desert Research, regional R&D centers, as well as prominent startups and corporations specializing in sustainable agriculture, energy, water, and infrastructure. 

The competition invites British startups to test and develop their solutions in the Negev desert, serving as an ideal testing ground for technologies in an increasingly arid world. With funding opportunities of up to £20,000, British startups can collaborate with trial partners in Israel to refine their technology. 

To participate and learn more about this competition, we invite you to register for an informative event scheduled for September 28th, UK time. During this event, you will gain insights into the unique advantages offered by Negev assets, engage in brainstorming sessions through one-on-one meetings, and begin the development of joint pilot projects. Winning startups may even secure funding for the execution of their pilot initiatives. 

To register for the event, simply follow the provided Zoom registration link.  

Don’t miss this chance to adapt your innovations for thriving in arid climates and to collaborate with Negev assets, your ideal partners for sustainable living in desert environments. Join the Launch Event and become a part of the solution to global desert challenges! 

Agri-EPI welcomes new Academic Partnerships Manager, Wendy Hewitson

Agri-EPI Centre has welcomed on board a new Academic Partnerships Manager to their team, Wendy Hewitson.

Wendy has a diverse background, with twenty years experience within the retail sector, followed by a further twelve years at Barclays, where she spent the last five as the AgriTech programme manager for Barclays Eagle Labs.

Wendy was one of the founders of the AgriTech Industry vertical for Barclays Eagle Labs, where she created and oversaw the delivery of many successful accelerators, events and industry focussed support material and programmes. She helped support much of the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout all areas of the food supply chain.

Wendy is passionate and highly effective at enabling knowledge transfer, sharing collaboration and growth opportunities with both agritech/agrifood innovators and key industry players within the UK.

Wendy said:

‘’I’m so excited to join Agri-EPI Centre. I’m hoping to help strengthen a collegiate approach between the expertise within academia, the innovative ecosystem, and the breadth of expertise that Agri-EPI centre provides to support the transition and transformation of the agricultural supply chain towards net zero.

The agricultural sector and food supply chain is an ever-changing environment, impacted daily by climatic, political, and societal pressures. It has such a breadth of un-tapped opportunities and capabilities. Having seen how technology, innovation, and collaboration has grown over the last five years I really see this as an opportunity to continue to broaden engagement and collaboration both nationally and globally.”

Putting farmers at the centre of innovation

Agri-EPI Centre has enlisted a network of farms spread throughout the UK to participate in the Agri-EPI Farm Network.

Why a network of commercial farmers?

The innovation farm network was developed by Agri-EPI from the desire to “close the gap” between research and the end-user, by creating a platform to host research projects and evaluate developing technology in a commercial farm environment, rather than in a simulated or research environment. Each farm has technology deployed to measure variance at every stage of production, understand inefficiencies within the system, and inform the agri-tech industry to direct their research to those areas. The goal is to ensure technology is developed to be robust and relevant to meet the challenges and requirements of the end users.

The network is diverse, comprising different farming systems, sectors, sizes and business structures producing a range of agricultural commodities, all equipped with the latest precision sensor technologies that are purpose-built to measure your agricultural innovation. We provide a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products through either commercial or grant funded projects. We assist in the development process through a combination of a strong technical team and a world class set of equipment and facilities. Our innovation services include validation, full use requirement and analysis, data collection and interrogation, market insight and analysis, sustainability analysis, economic modelling with the focus of ensuring agri-tech solutions will have a positive impact on-farm.

Lorenzo Conti, Founder & Managing Director at Crover, said:

“The Agri-EPI Centre has been our first and main partner for on farm demonstration projects. Being able to access a variety of commercial farm sites for testing and demonstration from early on and getting feedback from some of the country’s most innovative farmers about what works and what doesn’t has been invaluable for us.

Like every new technology, it is ultimately only as good as the value perceived by the end users, and the Agri-EPI Centre’s leadership in Knowledge Exchange and dissemination activities has also meant that we have been able to refine and deliver the message to farmers and grain storage operators and created a regular stream of inbound requests.

We are glad to see Agri-EPI’s team and footprint grow at a similar pace to our own business so as to be able to support agricultural innovation projects at more stages and geographies.

For any public-funding-backed innovation project in the UK, partnering up with the Agri-EPI Centre is a no-brainer!”

Read more below:

Farm offer brochure

Spectral imaging for the agriculture industry

Spectral imaging as a general concept combines characteristics of imaging and spectroscopy technologies. Optical spectral imaging particularly makes use of visible, near infrared and short-wave infrared spectral range, has been demonstrated to be a very powerful tool in identifying, classifying, and mapping specific targets across whole scenery image in various application scenarios.

Spectral Imaging is especially useful in the agricultural domain, where crop/vegetation in different conditions has unique spectral characteristics. With more robust and rugged imaging product integrated with various platforms, agri-tech has been undertaking revolutionary improvements for remote sensed inspection. Multispectral imaging, hyperspectral imaging, and SIF (solar-induced fluorescence) imaging can be broadly derived depending on spectral bands and resolution needed.

Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre said:
“We have established a strong sensing team within the company, able to deploy a range of spectral imagers into agriculture including some exciting unique capabilities. With our contextual farm data, storage facilities and analysis tools this is a key data service for developers which is available to all.”

Multispectral Imaging
The advantage of multi-spectral imaging is that it extends human sight sensitivity beyond visible spectrum. Some wavelengths that are widely recognized for particular applications, such as normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI), can be deployed into multi-spectral imaging. Nonetheless, it has been proven to be very useful in many other fields, greatly empowering advancement of agriculture. And the adoption of UAV has made it possible to make large-scale mapping and thus better agricultural management.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested MicaSense Altum sensor covering RGB, NIR, Red Edge and LWIR, which can be operated easily on VTOL UAV platform.

With this multi-spectral imaging system, several important vegetation indexes such as red edge, NDVI, can be quickly collected and mapped across survey fields.

Hyperspectral Imaging
Hyperspectral imaging captures images at hundreds of wavelengths, creating a detailed spectral signature of objects and materials. Compared to multispectral imagery, hyperspectral imagery measures energy in narrower and more numerous bands, thus giving much more information on target. Hyperspectral image data is a datacube, where each pixel holds full spectrum across the range. Since spectra are as unique as ‘fingerprint’ to target, hyperspectral imagery can unveil features that multispectral may miss out.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in a range of hyperspectral imaging systems. Read below for more:

Spectral imaging brochure

Ground-breaking technology to monitor biodiversity on-farm 24/7

40% of insect species risk extinction, and a further 30% are endangered (New Scientist 2019), yet few farmers have the tools to actively monitor or quantify on-farm biodiversity, despite it being an important measure of ecosystem, landscape, overall biological health of the farm and key public good. A joint collaborative project funded through Innovate UK and Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, with organic farmer Sophie Alexander, Agri-EPI Centre, AgriSound, Dorset Wildlife Trust, Pollenize CIC and Chirrup AI will use technology to monitor biodiversity 24/7 on a dairy and arable farm in Dorset.

The project aims to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of digital technology as a means of remotely monitoring wildlife diversity in a farming context and address escalating ecological challenges through accurate quantification of nature in any one location. With biodiversity monitoring set to increase through the introduction of policies and schemes, it’s vital to assist ecologists with access to scalable remote technologies.

Three separate remote sensing digital technologies will detect, identify, and quantify varieties of invertebrates and birds in correlation to flowering plants that they rely on. Insect conservation and pollination innovator AgriSound, who specialise in remote insect technology and environmental sensors to monitor pollinator populations have installed three unique in-field sensor devices for automated insect monitoring as part of the project. The technology, Polly™ is optimised for attracting pollinators from a broad spectrum of local insects and detects 24/7 through the use of a specialised bioacoustics technology with data transmitted and stored securely, providing a comprehensive understanding of the pollinators on the farm.

Combining other data sets across the farm include Pollenize app to photograph and geolocate plant species. Chirrup AI will use artificial intelligence to monitor species of birds that are thriving on the farm. This, in turn, will reveal more about the diversity of bugs and seeds above ground, and the richness of life in the soil. The same transects monitored by the digital devices will be surveyed by a professional ecologist from Dorset Wildlife Trust to ground-truth the findings.

Sophie Alexander, farm owner of Hemsworth Farms, said:

“I believe it is important to establish our biodiversity baseline and to continue to monitor progress. There are too few experienced ecologists with sufficient time to manage it all. We are therefore pleased to be involved with testing the data collection capabilities of digital technologies to assist ecologists and in this case, Dorset Wildlife Trust to ground truth the information and demonstrate how an organic farming system can nurture wildlife as well as produce food.”

This early-stage feasibility project, bringing together a technology start up with RTO and end user, will explore emerging applications of remote sensing to inform the development of a commercially relevant solution. This will catalyse a pipeline of further R&D across a much wider area, new research collaborations and accelerate research translation and development of new solutions.

Casey Woodward, Founder and CEO of AgriSound, said:

“We are thrilled to be embarking on this exciting new R&D project with Agri-EPI Centre and Hemsworth Farms. It’s a tremendous opportunity for all parties involved to put AgriSound’s cutting-edge pollinator monitoring technology to the test in a real-world farming context. We truly believe this project has the potential to shed new light on all of the great work happening across British farms to improve local biodiversity.

“This collaboration not only underscores the importance of partnerships in driving forward sustainable agriculture but also showcases the immense value of innovative sensing technologies for biodiversity assessment which are being increasingly required as consumers expect produce sourced from sustainable agricultural practices. We anticipate that the insights gained from this project will not only help Hemsworth Farms to better understand and manage biodiversity on their own sites but also act as an example for the wider industry, demonstrating how technology can be harnessed to promote biodiversity and sustainable farming practices.”

Kayleigh Breen joins Agri-EPI Centre as Agricultural Laboratory Technician

Agri-EPI has recently hired an Agricultural Laboratory Technician to join their technical team. Kayleigh Breen comes from an academic background in Applied Bioscience and Forensics and previously worked in science-based roles for over 5 years. These were based largely in the pharmaceutical industry at companies such as AMRI and Sartorius and extended to Covid-19 testing during the pandemic.

Kayleigh’s role is helping to develop the current laboratory and technical facilities which are based in Agri-EPI’s Northern Agri-Tech Hub using existing instrumentation or bringing in new equipment where required. Some instrumentation already in place includes the Voice200 Syft Mass Spectrometer capable of highly sensitive, selective and non-discriminatory semi/ volatile organic compound analysis of air, water and soil samples, the TA.XT Plus 100C Texture Analyser capable of analysing various food, soil and animal feed samples for things such as consistency and shearing resistance, and also the NIRFlex N-500 FT-NIR Spectrometer used to analyse food, beverage and animal feed samples for moisture, macronutrients and protein content.

Her aim is to provide in-house and on-site testing of various sample types depending on project and partner requirements, such as soil, water and air samples, extending to animal products such as wool or faecal sample analysis.

Kayleigh said:

“This will be a substantial undertaking, but I am looking forward to the challenge and am keen to transform the lab into something that will actively benefit the business and projects moving forward.”

Tag Archive for: technology

Midlands Agri-Tech Coffee Hour (MATCH) Lunch

Agri-EPI in collaboration with The School of Sustainable Food and Farming invites you to attend our networking lunch on the 11th October.

This event is sponsored by Jonathan Lee Recruitment.

Use this opportunity to chat and get to know each other, fostering new connections and opportunities for collaboration within Agri-Tech. This will also be your opportunity to find out more about our upcoming fully funded Start Up programme.

We know that when you have an innovative idea that making those initial steps into starting your own business can be daunting, not having the right support or knowing where to turn can make it a difficult pathway to follow.

If you, or someone you know that has a great idea. Or indeed if you want share some of the pitfalls you encountered when you took this leap of faith, we’d love you to join us.

We’d love for you to help shape the next generation of innovative businesses that are set to challenge / disrupt the industry and support it to achieve net zero, eliminate inequalities and be an integral part in the delivery of the sustainable development goals globally .

At Agri-EPI, we collaborate with technology innovators and developers to transform their agri-tech ideas into reality through our comprehensive innovation services. Our offerings include a diverse network of commercial farms, R&D support, and business assistance to facilitate the development, testing, and commercialization of cutting-edge agricultural solutions. By providing the necessary resources and expertise, we empower innovators to drive the future of agriculture.

The School of Sustainable Food and Farming at Harper Adams University is supported by their steering partners: Morrisons, McDonalds UK & Ireland, and National Farmers Union. Their shared purpose is to:

• Equip farmers with skills and knowledge towards Net Zero within sustainability parameters (economic, environmental, and social).

• Talk a common language with regards to Net Zero and sustainable farming.

• Improving farm data to track carbon emission reductions and sequestration offsetting at a whole farm system approach.

• Encourage new entrants into the food industry and a diversity of entrepreneurial people

This event is open to member and non-members and includes lunch!

Members free of charge. Non-members first attendance free, there after £12 per person.

Easter Bush Facilities Tour – seeding innovation and collaboration

Agri-EPI and the Roslin Institute invite you to an Easter Bush Facilities Tour on Tuesday the 17th October 2023.

This facilities tour will provide an opportunity to visit specialist campus facilities and network with experts to explore opportunities for collaborative innovation. Attendees will also have the opportunity to visit the Roslin Innovation Centre, which offers physical and virtual co-location for high growth innovative companies with a focus on Agritech, Animal Health and Aquaculture, enabling them to establish and grow.

Tours will include:

Aquaculture Genetics Research Facility – a freshwater aquarium facility designed for early-life stages of farmed fish species.

Agri-EPI’s Northern Agri-Tech Innovation Hub – a facility aimed at fostering new ideas and technologies from academia, start-ups, established companies and farmers. Agri-EPI’s dedicated team works to develop profitable, productive, and sustainable solutions for the agriculture industry, bridging the gap between early-stage commercialisation to implementation. They offer office, lab, and workshop spaces for start-ups and SMEs, providing them with necessary resources and helping them connect with like-minded individuals

Roslin Innovation Centre – a business gateway to innovation providing office, laboratory or virtual space for companies. The University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies incorporates the Roslin Institute, the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems, the Roslin Innovation Centre and other entities. World-class infrastructure at our Easter Bush Campus offers a gateway to expertise to collaborate and drive sustainable agriculture, control diseases and enhance health.

Bio-imaging & Flow Cytometry Facility – featuring a range of high-end microscopy, cell sorting and flow cytometry equipment and expertise, based in the Roslin Institute.

Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility – featuring ultra-sensitive mass spectroscopy instrumentation and expertise to characterise the proteome and metabolome in living systems, based in the Roslin Institute.

There will be complementary networking lunch and arrival drinks.

MATCH on Tour and Agri-EPI agri-tech Showcase event

Agri-EPI invites you to attend our networking event and the agri-tech showcase of some of our technology at our Crop Technology Southern Innovation Hub, Cranfield University on the 24th of October. 

Agri-EPI’s Crop Technology Southern Hub is based at the Agri-Informatics Building at Cranfield University.

Delivering academic rigour, data analytics and agri-tech expertise, our Crop Technology Southern Innovation Hub is home to world-class collaborative research within state-of-the-art facilities.

This event is sponsored by Jonathan Lee Recruitment who will give a 10 minute presentation.

Use this opportunity to chat and get to know each other, fostering new connections and opportunities for collaboration within Agri-Tech.

Explore the asset capability Agri-EPI Centre has that may be useful for your future research and project work.

The following items will be on display:

  • Robotriks RTU v4 autonomous platform.
  • Trinity F90 VTOL drone equipped with Multispectral sensors.
  • DJI T10 Spray Drone.
  • Freefly XQ-1400S drone equipped with Hyperspectral and LIDAR sensors.
  • DJI M300 equipped with GPR sensor.
  • A range of field-based spectrometry equipment.

The event will include welcome drinks and refreshments and brunch.

A tour of the site and demonstrations can be arranged on request

Members free of charge.

Non-members first attendance free, there after £12 per person.

MATCH: South West Dairy Development Centre

Agri-EPI invites you to attend our networking coffee hour at the South West Dairy Development Centre on the 2nd of November.

Located close to Shepton Mallet in the heart of the region’s milk field, the unit features a typically sized 180-cow herd run on a commercial basis and provides a platform for higher TRL developers.

The South West Dairy Development Centre presents a fresh vision for the UK dairy industry. The resource offers a truly innovative environment for developing, testing and demonstrating new technologies and techniques to support sustainable, efficient, high health and welfare, cost-efficient milk production.

Use this opportunity to chat and get to know each other, fostering new connections and opportunities for collaboration within Agri-Tech. There will also be an opportunity to have a tour of our facility.

This event is sponsored by Jonathan Lee Recruitment.

This event is open to member and non-members and includes lunch!

Members free of charge.

Non-members first attendance free, there after £12 per person.

Due to the nature of the facility it is not currently accessible.