From blue-sky thinking to market realities, the third annual Agri-Tech Week showcased a myriad of new technologies and cutting-edge research aiming to meet the challenges of future farming.
Strawberry-picking robots, real-time crop data from drones and early-warning soil sensors to predict disease problems – it all adds up to a futuristic vision of farming.
But these innovations are all close to becoming a commercial reality right now in East Anglia.
And they were just a handful of the diverse array of new technologies showcased during Agri-Tech Week, a series of seminars held across five counties in the region during the last five days.
Now in its third year the event, organised by the Agri-Tech East partnership, brings together farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors in a bid to translate the innovations of the region's renowned science and enterprise community into tangible assets for farm businesses.
Julius Joel, chair of the Agri-Tech East stakeholder group, introduced the discussion by suggesting that 'incremental change' may not be enough to solve modern farming's mounting challenges, including boosting profitability, overcoming the yield plateau, stopping soil erosion and waste contamination, lowering the sector's carbon footprint and improving animal welfare.
Delegates at the week's centrepiece REAP (Realising our Economic and Agricultural Potential) conference at the Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge, were shown the whole spectrum of innovation from early-stage research to new business start-ups seeking investors.
One of the star attractions was the prototype of a fruit-picking robot, developed by Cambridgeshire-based firm Dogtooth – a timely innovation, given the horticultural industry's concerns over how to replace its migrant workforce after Britain leaves the EU.
The machine is designed to work within the narrow rows in poly-tunnels, using a memory bank of thousands of training images to assess if the fruit is ripe for picking, before the robot arm collects it and places it in a punnet. The whole process currently takes 12 seconds per strawberry, but the company aims to halve this during commercial trials next year.
Co-founder Duncan Robertson said the company aims to start introducing picking services for growers next summer, under the guidance of human supervisors, but the end goal is to make direct sales of automated picking robots by 2019.
'We are a lot more than just a way of replacing human beings,' he said. 'Humans are remarkable, with so much dexterity. But what people like about our product is it can do the things humans cannot do.
'It eliminates recruitment risk, gives a predictable picking capacity, with a consistent speed and quality. A robot does not get tired, and it still picks just as well after 18 hours of continuous use. Picking overnight is another huge advantage in terms of the shelf life of the product.
'There is a Big Data opportunity too. Our machines will traverse each row of the poly-tunnel every two or three days and will take images and track the growth trajectory of each strawberry plant. The advantage of that in terms of yield and disease prevention is huge.
'I don't want to take jobs away from people, but the simple thing is that farmers cannot fill the jobs they have got.'
At the end of the week, Dr Belinda Clarke, director of Agri-Tech East, said: 'I am so inspired that Agri-Tech Week has provided a forum for so many organisations to celebrate and engage their excellence in agri-tech with farmers.
'To be able to showcase that journey of innovation through the whole spectrum of technology readiness levels, from discovery research right through to the market shows the multiple entry points where partners can come together to help, whether they want to get in at a very early stage or wait until it is nearer the market.'
Start-up showcase
The start-up businesses demonstrating their ideas and prototypes included:
• FungiAlert, an early detection device which could alert growers to the presence of disease in their soils. The device is inserted into the soil, and chemicals in the needle attract spores, which spark an alert to the user and allow preventative sprays to be considered..
• SwiftDX has incorporated genetic testing into a portable strip-test which works in a similar way to a pregnancy test. The prototype could be customised to answer the grower's genetic questions about their crops within minutes, identifying potential disease problems and informing spraying decisions.
• PBD Biotech has developed an early warning system which could dramatically speed up the diagnosis of bovine TB in cattle.
• GroPod, based at the former RAF buildings in Scottow, introduced a hydroponic containerised growing system which is not susceptible to the weather, captures and re-uses water, optimises the use of nutrients and removes the need for pesticides.
• Hummingbird is a data analytics business, using drones equipped with multi-spectral sensors at critical decision-making junctures in the farming year, to provide intelligence on disease detection and yield prediction within 24 hours.
Emerging agri-tech
Scientific projects underpinning agri-tech improvements were also demonstrated, including:
• A PhD project at Norwich's John Innes Centre trying to find genetic markers which could increase nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in crop performance.
• A University of Nottingham study exploring why sugar beet roots don't take up water from below 30cm depth, in an effort to improve water uptake and prevent yield losses. The solution could come through recommending different soil structures, or identifying variety traits for plant breeders to focus on.
• Consultants at ADAS are working to find out if a pollen beetle's 'bark is worse than its bite'– discovering that oilseed rape crops are more resilient to beetle damage than previously thought, prompting a change in the threshold for insecticide use.
• The Earlham Institue in Norwich explained its CropQuant monitoring system, comprising an array of devices including in-field sensors and cameras analysed by complex computer processors, to monitor plant growth and examine the environmental factors affecting crop development.
Innovative thinking
Among all the technology, there was also room for some traditional thinking as part of the innovation agenda.
The keynote speaker was Gary Zimmer, the US pioneer of biological farming, who outlined strategies for maintaining healthy soils which he said could increase yields by more than 50pc. As a dairy nutritionist, he said he had learned how to feed his soils in the same way he had changed the diet of his cows to maximise their milk yield.
He said it was crucial to balance soil minerals – particularly phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and boron – to maximise soil health, while feeding soil biology and managing air and water and crop residue.
He also urged farmers not to be bound by generic strategies on minimum tillage or cover cropping. Instead, he said they should identify their constraints, take whatever steps are need to resolve the problem, including 'thoughtful disturbance of the soil' if needed, and then tailor the cultivation and nutrient regime for the following crop.
'What I'm talking about is not something new,' he said. 'This is not a radical change. I am not fighting the existing reality. To change something you need a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.'
Are you pioneering new farming techniques or technologies? Contact chris.hill@archant.co.uk.
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