Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** agriculture is fundamental to our…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** agriculture is fundamental to our existence. As our world grows, agriculture productivity must increase to keep pace without reducing profits or increasing environmental impact. This requires continuous optimization of agriculture processes. However, we cannot optimize something that we cannot measure accurately. Crop monitoring is an essential activity that provides such measurements on crop status.crop monitoring involves checking on the crops for any plant health issues, for estimating the produce, for planning labor deployment, or for other farming decisions. Traditionally this is done manually with experienced farmers walking their fields and observing the crops. Clearly with many hundreds of acres of farms, IT is impossible to do this manually; only a small fraction of the fields can be surveyed in this fashion. Several companies are working to solve this problem using technology, but their solutions DON't fit well with prevalent farming practices. Manyusedrones, aircrafts, or satellite images, which workwell forproviding broad overview of farms, but fail to look under the canopy and observe issues that require per-plant pictures. Many require images of the fields to be uploadedonto a central serverbefore they can be processed. The step of uploading images to a central server is time-consuming and, in many cases, requires manual oversight to complete. This approach prevents crop monitoring from being real-time. In addition, the amount of data that is required to be uploaded limits the size of the farm area that can be surveyed. Many companies provide crop monitoring as a service, where they dothe task of image collection and processing and then provide a report. In such cases, their monitoringschedule may or may not match with what is required by the growers. If a grower needs to do the monitoring every day orweek for every farm they own, IT is usually extremely difficult for suchcompanies to provide that level of service at a reasonable cost.agrofocal's goal is to build a real-time crop monitoring system that is easy to use, is affordable, and fits seamlessly with the existing farming operations. The crop monitoring system can be mounted on any moving vehicle going through the farm. This allows the camera to get up-close, under-the-canopy view of the crop. The entire process of collecting the images and operating on those images to extract the insights is done on the vehicle itself in real-time, which eliminates the time-consuming process of uploading the images to a central server for processing. The insights are available and ready to be viewed on an APP as soon as the image collection is done. Since in this technology the image collection and the processing happen together without any manual intervention, IT can be completely owned and operated by the grower themselves, without requiring the involvement of the company providing the technology. This way the grower can mount the system on their vehicle and do the monitoring as many, times as they require. They can also choose to mount this system on a vehicle that would be going through the farm to perform some other tasks. This can enable them to do the monitoring while performing the other tasks, such as weeding, pest-control, spraying, etc., thereby saving time and money.agrofocal succesfully developed the system during phase i for farm operations. During phase II, the team will conduct field trials to assess the systems ability to determine crop yield and accuracy while monitoring operational robustness. In addition, the team will evaluate and refine the AI models based on the field trial data. Succesful completion of the phase II objectives will set the stage from product launch and commercialization.agrofocal's crop monitoring solution will provide useful insights in real-time, will be easy to use, and will fit seamlessly with existing farming operations. IT will enable farmers to make informed decisions based on objective crop measurements. The insights provided will drive efficiencies in agriculture that will increase production, reduce costs, and lessen environmental impact. These efficiencies will positively change agriculture to the benefit of everyone.