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The BioScout Platform is fully autonomous and can operate for many years.
Working on spore trapping as part of his microbiology studies was when Lewis Collins first thought about the challenge of analysing airborne diseases.
He realised that by the time useful data was received, it was typically already too late to avoid an outbreak within a crop. With his mechatronic engineering cap on, Collins had a vision of automating the process so that growers could get a realtime understanding of the minuscule pathogens in their environment.
The result is Bioscout – a high-tech solution that takes the guesswork out of detecting fungal crop diseases and allows a better focus on other orchard tasks.
Collins says, typically, growers rely on intuition and symptomatic indicators to manage disease in production crops – like Alternaria fruit rot, Brown spot, Blackleg, Downy and Powdery mildew – which often results in spraying too much, too often and at the wrong time.
Bioscout is said to allow growers to see the ‘unseeable’ and react to a disease presence weeks before it impacts yields. It also reduces preventive sprays by understanding the general disease risk. Three installations are currently in their first season of use in New Zealand.
The BioScout Platform is fully autonomous and can operate for many years on end without human intervention.
It also has a ‘worldfirst’ airborne disease tracking ability. This is equipped with a comprehensive suite of environmental sensors, including monitoring weather conditions and live spore counts. This allows the system to provide the complete picture of disease risk at field-level resolution, typically up to two weeks before symptoms become apparent in the crop.
The system works by drawing air into the units causing particles to adhere to a sticky strip. These particles are constantly photographed using automated microscopy. From here, an AI function compares the photos with an expanding database of pathogen images.
This allows the system to track the spread of fungal diseases on farms and orchards, providing growers and agronomists with real-time, location and disease specific data. As a rule of thumb, one Bioscout device is able to offer informative data for 20 to 100 ha. However, unit density also depends on topography and target diseases decided by a site survey. The full BioScout dashboard can be viewed on a laptop. This displays a map of an individual property, showing the location of the devices, all current pathogen warnings and weather information.
The company suggests that having a better understanding of how critical environmental conditions affects your disease risk and allows growers to apply fungicides exactly when needed for maximum effectiveness and an improved return on investment.
At the same time, it also offers peace of mind by removing the “unknown factor”, while also improving confidence in reducing fungicide use and offering the choice of switching to more biological solutions.
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With the biannual Italian EIMA machinery Expo less than a month away, Case IH has taken out a Technical Evolution award for the Advanced Vehicle Suspension system available on its Optum 360–440 series tractors.
The Advanced Vehicle Suspension system, available on Optum 360, 390, and 440 models, responds to changing conditions, automatically adjusting how the suspension reacts to absorbs shocks and controlling vehicle movement.
In operation, sensors monitor the vibrations transmitted from the tractor chassis to the operator cabin, allowing the system to adjust suspension damping in real time. The control system incorporates key priorities, such as comfort at lower speeds and stability as speed increases, while also reacting to factors such as lower tyre pressures, where the tyres absorb more of the initial shock.
Case IH said as suspension requirements change throughout the working day, as tractors move between the paddock and road transport, the system manages suspension response in the background as tasks, speeds and conditions change, leaving the operator without the need to make manual adjustments.
Richard Hollins, Optum series tractors global product manager, said: “Pioneering technology must earn its place in the working day. Farmers and contractors will judge an investment by what it delivers, including manageable ownership costs, dependable up-time and the versatility to tackle different jobs. With AVS, we are putting intelligent control to work for comfort and stability, without giving the operator another setting to manage.”
Organised by FederUnacoma, the Italian Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers Federation, the contest has been part of EIMA since 1986, with the Technical Evolution distinction awarded to products that introduce original improvements to solutions already manufactured or patented.
www.caseih.com
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