IFSAC

The Satellite Applications Catapult has been working with users from across the agricultural sector in Latin America to educate and demonstrate how satellite technologies can help optimise the production of rice, soybean, and table grapes.

Working alongside the British Embassies in Peru, Colombia, and Paraguay and funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the projects brought together growers and federations from these countries with UK experts from several agricultural satellite data service providers. This collaborative approach has led to a number of innovative data products being produced that are expected to help optimise production better through better agronomic decision-making and improvements in yields.

Focusing on rice in Colombia, table grapes in Peru, and soybean in Paraguay, satellite and in-situ data (e.g. LAI, crop metrics such as height and irrigation scheduling) was collected across the growing season to generate data products centred around improving crop yield. A number of assessments were undertaken to generate these products which included:

• Monitoring of a fungicide trial to quantify the effectiveness of different treatments and help optimise disease control.
• Monitoring field conditions and crop development/ stages through the crop growing season.
• Identifying fields displaying variability indicative of crop stress (drought, disease, and pest damage) to help target field investigations and enable intervention.

Conclusions

The partners involved in IFSAC from the UK have since built upon the relationships gained during this project to secure larger projects and commercial contracts within Latin America.