The starting point of the research was the European market analysis about holdings size, standard output of crops, and other indicators chosen for their significances on European agricultural market. This analysis allows to select three interesting crops and three countries in which test Agricolus platform for first. The crops chosen are wheat, olive grove and tobacco, that represent also three different kind of cultivation, arable, arboriculture and specialized intensive crop. From results obtained by tests in Italy, Agricolus will be adopted for monitoring also crops in Spain and Denmark, countries chosen for their interesting agricultural market and potentiality. TeamDev carries on pilot test on different farms, from multinational, to small farm and collects important feedback from farmers for improve functionalities and process. Beside this, TeamDev activate some strategic partnership for implement Agricolus functionalities, to diffuse Agricolus platform in countries different from Italy, and receive feedbacks and suggestions to improve platform's features. For example, was signed partnership agreements with international IoT company providing weather service and satellite imagery service, or with scientific partners: Agriculture University of Perugia, research centres in Italy and Germany. These scientific partners contribute to the study of farming operations, plant pathologies and forecast models for pest spread on crops. Teamdev works also on brand awareness promoting and disseminating Agricolus DSS through social networking channels (FB, Twitter and Linkedin), through content-sharing platforms (IPresslive) or presenting the platform during expositions, events and conference.
Agricolus DSS is a modular and expandable solution that provide enterprise features:
• Cloud based solution provided via web (multi-platform, no IT investments required, secure backup included)
• Mobile app to support agronomists and farmers directly on the field.
• Multi-user with multi-level access (Company / Agronomic expert/ Farmer)
• Multi-language user interface
• Sensor hardware independent with different sensors' suppliers.
• Historical data management (weather, production, alerts)
• Can integrate Remote Sensing features, through images detected by satellite, UAV, aircraft, providing multispectral analysis for estimated yield and other purposes.
• Field layout import (we can import also the already present pushpins provided by the customer)
The functionality developed are: crops and farms information achieve, determination of field fertility and field area, analysis of field variability and delineation of area for variable rate fertilization, variable rate seeding and site specific application of pesticides, guide for soil sampling points, weather monitoring, forecast of crop disease, prescription maps.
For this objective Agricolus DSS is designed as an Open API solution: the Application Programming Interface, that allows third-party developers to write solutions interacting with Agricolus DSS, is publicly available and fully documented for all developers to access. It’s designed to acquire large data quantities (big data) provided by external, heterogeneous sources. Agricolus DSS uses the spatial components of ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), the world leader in Geographic Information Systems. In fact, a significant part of system data is arranged on a geographical base for store, analyze, search, share, visualize, inquire and update information. Very important is the integration with IoT weather sensor installed on fields and with images detected by remote sensing.
