Smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production
A newly funded interdisciplinary project will focus on using smartphone images of fields to create visualizations of past and future crop development. This project is the first funded through the research initiative launched by the World Food System Center and fenaco cooperative on the topic of Smart Sustainable Farming.
In October 2021, the World Food System Center at ETH Zurich and the fenaco cooperative launched a joint research initiative to address major challenges in food systems in Switzerland and worldwide. With the focus of Smart Sustainable Farming, the initiative will fund the development of new approaches at the interface of agriculture, sustainable production systems, robotics and artificial intelligence. The partners aim to contribute to sustainable and competitive agricultural production and increase transparency from agricultural production to consumers.
The first interdisciplinary project to be funded will focus on the use of smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production. Management decisions in crop fields are based on both crop and field traits. The goal of the new project will be to improve decision support of farmers, based on high-quality visual representations of the past, current and projected future status of the crop field. By collecting smartphone images of crop fields at points in time, field visualizations will be created using a combination of machine learning, crop growth models and visualisation technologies. Farmers could then receive visual renditions of the past and near-future development of their crops.
The core outcome is to improve decision support for farmers. Also, the visualizations can demonstrate to interested researchers and citizen scientists how crops develop in the field and how this can be adjusted via management.
“"Smartphones are part of everyday work, also in agriculture. The first project of our research cluster with the World Food System Center of ETH Zurich aims to make sound statements about the condition of crop fields based on simple cell phone images. Such a solution is an important building block for productive and sustainable Swiss agriculture."”Michael Feichtknecht, Head of the Department of Crop Production and Executive Board Member at fenaco cooperative
The project, entitled The predictive power of smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production, will be jointly led by Achim Walter, Professor of Crop Science at ETH Zürich and Ce Zhang, Professor of Computer Science at the DS3Lab at ETH Zurich.
The initiative will continue to fund projects, with the next call for proposals scheduled in early 2023.
“Visualizing the development of crops is important to quantify how they react to their environment. The project will help utilizing the power of science for real-life challenges.”Achim Walter, Professor of Crop Science at ETH Zurich