Example of IoT Implementation in a B2B Agriculture FMCG Company

In continuation to our previous blog, in this blog, we will be talking about the implementation of IoT across the agriculture value chain for B2B companies and how it has really helped them. 

Inside a Lab - tissue culture or micropropagation as a means of multiplying disease-free plants that can then be used to produce healthy seed tubers for farmers. Potato is susceptible to a lot of diseases. This is where tissue culture plays an important role. First, viruses and other pathogens are eliminated by growing potato plants in a controlled environment at high temperatures. The disease-free shoot tips of the plants are then placed on a standard nutrient medium in glass containers (in vitro) in a completely sterile laboratory environment. 

This is where continuous temperature and humidity monitoring is required. The data collected by the sensor is sent to the researchers via the dashboard. 

Inside the Greenhouse - The tips develop into plantlets that are then transferred to either a greenhouse or a field protected from insect pests, where they grow at the same rate as normal potato plants but produce smaller tubers. Inside the Greenhouse, accurate Temperature, Humidity, and Lux monitoring is required to make sure that the plantlets are exposed to the proper environmental conditions. In some scenarios, the plantlets are also given to the farmer for replication. In case the replication is happening in the field, again variables like Temperature, Humidity, Solar radiation, Rainfall, and soil moisture need to be maintained. Soil testing (Macro and micronutrients) also help the company as well as the farmer to verify is proper nutrients are available for growth. 

From field to cold storage 

After the tubers are produced, before the plantation season, the seeds are stored at a low temperature inside the Cold Storage. Inside the cold storage, seeds need to be stored in proper environmental conditions to make sure that the quality of seeds is not affected. 

1. If the temperature is too less ( below the optimum range), the tubers/seeds might die. 
2. If the temperature is above the optimum range, sprouting might happen. 
3. If sprouting is happening, the CO2 content will increase. 

So Research team/operations team needs real-time Temperature, Humidity and CO2 values need to be monitored in real-time. In case if any of the variables are going outside the optimum range, an alert message needs to be sent to the team. The team also get daily and weekly report of the variables delivered to them over the email which makes the monitoring process easier. 

From Cold Storage to Field 

The tubers need to be transported from the cold storage in one part of the country to the field in another distant part of the county. A vehicle that is used needs real-time monitoring of the location (GPS coordinates) and temperature, humidity, and CO2 between the tubers bag. This helps the operations team to monitor if the vehicle is properly covered and not left out in the open sun. This also helps them to make sure that tubers/seed quality is not getting impacted. 

Plantation of seeds in the field 

The tubers/seeds are planted in the field for production. The production team, research team, and operations team is interested in following

1. Testing of soil for micro and macronutrients. Usually, most of the company do the testing but there is no geotagged digital record. 
2. Monitoring of farm-level micro-weather 
3. Soil moisture, temperature, and leaf wetness play a vital role in most fungal diseases. 
4. Image-based scouting can help the farmer to get the consultation. The images taken by the farmer will also help to develop newer geography-specific models.
5. If the farmer is following all the best packages of practices and the progress done by them. 
6. Change in the vegetation cover where the translation is done with respect to time. 

At the same time, the management will like to know the gist of the activities and current conditions. They don't want to go in detail but know how things are changing on a bigger scale. They want the reports to be delivered in their inbox with information like - which area needs more attention, the progress is done by the farmers, is some area under the disease attack and approximate production. 

This is where Yuktix GidaBits help B2B companies to streamline the real-time monitoring of the complete agriculture value chain. Yuktix deploy the following devices in the field 

    a. Solar-powered weather station with full-fledged research-grade sensors. This sensor includes 

• Temperature, Humidity, Pressure, and Rainfall 
• Wind speed, Wind direction 
• Soil VWC, Soil EC, and Soil Temperature
• Lux, Solar radiation 
• Leaf Wetness 

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    b. GreenSense Nodes with either Soil VWC or Leaf wetness or Air Temperature and Humidity Sensors. Multiple of them can be deployed in the field to monitor from multiple locations

    c. Yuktix Solar-powered Insect trap and crop camera - to monitor the population of insects that can be lured via pheromone or light and to monitor the growth of the crop and find out if they are under biotic or abiotic stress.

   

Data collected by the devices in the field is pushed to Yuktix ankiDB cloud and presented in front of users via the Yuktix GidaBits platform. Using GidaBits, Researchers and management get 

1. Disease and Insect forecasting and advisory 
2. Irrigation advisory 
3. Optimize resource usage 
4. Interact with growers and staff on Field
5. Track the assets in the field 
6. Monitor the growth of the crop 
7. Reports were delivered over the email for quick assessment. 
8. Data ownership and privacy with in-premise deploymeny. 

In our next blog, we will discuss more Yuktix ankiDB on-premise deployment how it helps B2B companies to own the data and maintain privacy. 

Stay tuned. Happy Farming. 

Please contact us if you have any questions about GidaBits.

Email us on support@yuktix.com.
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