Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production
Nived Chebrolu gave a talk regarding the possibilities of robotics on 28th Dec, 2019 at the T.M. Rao High School, Bhattiprolu, India. The talk was attended by students from grades 6 to 10.
The talk highlighted the roles robots could play in our day-to-day activities. Considerable interest was expressed by the students towards pursuing a career in this direction and were particularly excited by the possibility of robotics in agriculture, which forms the primary economic activity in this region.
For the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia a successful structural change of the Rhineland mining area after the phase-out of lignite-based electricity is a central task. “The regional agricultural and food industry can and will play an active role here as an important driving force. Bread instead of lignite – through the production of food, but also as a supplier of renewable raw materials, a modern agricultural policy in the region will actively shape the upcoming process of change”, said Environment and Agriculture Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser in Jülich. Together with Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Zukunftsagentur Rheinisches Revier, the Ministry of the Environment had invited to the event “Neues Rheinisches Revier – Strukturwandel mit modernen Land- und Ernährungswirtschaft”.
Continue reading “Structural change in the Rhineland area with research as a driving force”
The geobusiness region bonn, a network of the Geo-IT industry in the Bonn Rhein-Sieg area and the district of Ahrweiler, held its 8th GeoDialogue at the beginning of December 2019. In the “old church” in the Collegium Leonium, the Geo-IT initiative brought together representatives from science, business and administration to jointly experience projects in which Bonn proves to be exceptionally digital and excellent.
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Scientists at the University of Bonn are investigating how medicinal plants can be cultivated without herbicides and with as little soil damage as possible. Over the next three years, the project “Optimech” will receive around 1.1 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Agency for Renewable Resources.
Continue reading “Gentle weed control for medicinal plants”
What’s the growth like? Have pests and diseases struck? Are the increased droughts affecting the plants? Anyone who breeds new plant varieties has to collect extensive data on question like plant growth, diseases or environmental effects. The startup Pheno-Inspect aims to accelerate plant breeding. The cameras of a drone record the plant populations, and software automatically evaluates their properties using artificial intelligence methods. This quickly shows whether the new breed has been successful or not. The project is funded by the “START-UP-Hochschul-Ausgründungen” program with around 270,000 euros.
Continue reading “New Startup Pheno-Inspect accelerates plant breeding”On the basis of environmental and crop growth data and profound expert knowledge, the “Fraunhofer Research Center for Machine Learning” and the cluster of excellence PhenoRob have developed an artificial intelligence that determines environmental conditions in agriculture and their impact on plant growth. With their technology, the scientists took the first place in the Syngenta Crop Challenge 2019.
Continue reading “PhenoRob and partners win Syngenta Crop Challenge”