Tech company Hydrosat is developing a data platform with satellite sourced imagery to provide agronomic insights.
Specifically, it’s aiming to give farmers and growers recommendations on irrigation and water usage for crops.
Its IrriWatch software is available on desktop and a mobile app to give growers an irrigation advisor with data and imagery updated every day. The goal is to advise on when and how much to water.
CEO Pieter Fossel says its proprietary insights are especially helpful where water is scarce or highly regulated. This includes California almond crops.
“We give practical, usable information updated on a daily basis. With new imagery and data in the system and launching our proprietary satellite last year, we are now collecting a lot of imagery of the earth in several different spectral bands.”
Hydrosat's IrriWatch Platform
He says in addition to NDVI, Hydrosat is also collecting thermal layers to identify heat stress or water deficiency. The imagery is provided at a 10 meter per pixel resolution. This is possible with the company’s launch of its VanZyl-1 satellite aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-11 mission.
“Think of NDVI as a lagging indicator, because if the crop is showing a color or density change, the stress has already occurred. Whereas with thermal land surface temperatures, that’s a leading indicator one to two weeks before you’ll see the stress show up in the vegetable index.”
Fossel says it’s up to the grower to ground truth the source of the stress, but having the data insight to take action allows growers to identify the field and the areas of the fields where there are problems.
“Irrigation is at the core of what we do, but our customers do use the products for other things—tracking the growth of biomass, identify stress spots, and more.”
IrriWatch includes evapotranspiration mapping to measure plant water use and help growers fine-tune irrigation strategies.
Pricing for the technology is geographically based and does decrease with the larger number of acres included in the subscription. Past and current customers include agribusiness, agronomic consulting groups, and farmers.
Hydrosat’s business is global, with only 40% of its current customers in the U.S.
“We are just at the beginning of satellite imagery. There are lots of solutions for the global ag market that can be based on existing imagery. But if you think beyond NDVI, beyond the publicly available data, there is so much more we can do, especially with thermal and moving from lagging indicators to leading indicators.”
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