A London-based agtech company leveraging space imagery to transform grain farming is seeking opportunities in Australia to further develop its technology.
The Messium platform measures and analyses in-season nitrogen concentration levels in wheat to provide precise recommendations for the application and timing of fertiliser. This lets farmers maintain maximum crop growth and minimise their nitrogen fertiliser use, helping to slash costs.
The innovation is currently being fast-tracked through the 2024 GRDC GroundUp program, which aims to accelerate solutions for Australia’s grains sector.
By offering farmers insights to optimise their use of nitrogen fertiliser, Messium’s technology has the potential to substantially reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which has 273 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
The process behind the platform is complex but essentially, Messium is able to assess wheat crop nitrogen status remotely by using hyperspectral cameras mounted on satellites. These capture a detailed perspective of the Earth’s surface, including the wavelengths needed for accurate nitrogen concentration estimation. Selected images are then processed using machine learning technology, which is also fed crop growth insights gathered on the ground, to generate nitrogen dilution curves for each field. These curves let farmers determine whether crops are above or below the optimum nitrogen concentration.
The insights are delivered to farmers within 48 hours of capture via email or text, and can be integrated into existing technology platforms, which allows for nitrogen fertiliser application rates and timings to be quickly adjusted to avoid over or under-fertilisation. It’s a major shift from existing measurement solutions such as lab tests, which are time-consuming, and tractor devices, which are expensive and have low adoption rates.
Messium CTO Vishal Soomaney Vijaykumar said his company’s hyperspectral remote sensing nitrogen concentration estimation system was groundbreaking for farmers in Australia and beyond.
“It’s the first product to offer farmers access to regular and accurate nitrogen insights, and the only one capable of true scalability,” he said.
“By offering accurate in-field information, we provide the best possible anchor from which to make rate and timing decisions on nitrogen application.”
Mr Vijaykumar said Messium’s extensive research in partnership with industry leaders showed a very high level of over-fertilisation in the UK, with similar rates likely in Australia.
“We have determined the average over-fertilisation error ranges from 15% to 30%, with around 60% of farmers over-fertilising annually,” he said.
“By curbing excessive nitrogen application and optimising timing, Messium has the potential to significantly reduce nitrous oxide emissions and alleviate leaching into groundwater, thereby fostering environmental benefits at both the farm and national levels.”
Supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), GroundUp is a 12-week accelerator program run by the Agtech and Logistics Hub, which is powered by AgriBusiness Connect.
It was launched to drive innovation in the Australian grains sector, with a grower-led focus to find real solutions to improve productivity.
AgriBusiness Connect CEO Thomas Hall said the innovators selected for this year’s GroundUp program offered a host of remarkable solutions.
“We are incredibly excited about the 10 innovators in this year’s cohort, who were selected from a large number of quality applicants from across Australia and beyond,” he said.
“It’s great to see Messium working towards solving a major challenge in the grains industry – excessive nitrogen fertiliser application, which results in unnecessary expenditure for farmers and adversely impacts the environment.
“We can’t wait to see how they further progress their solution throughout the program.”
Messium CEO George Marangos-Gilks said Messium had already secured agreements to conduct trials with several prominent smart farms and grower groups in Australia whilst also being involved in the GRDC-backed RiskWi$e initiative.
“Australia is our primary focus for early expansion efforts, and we are building vast connections across the continent, including researchers, local grower groups, and agricultural corporations,” he said.
“We hope the accelerator will provide further opportunities to expand our trial network to build on the 3000-plus data points we have already gathered from trials across the world that ensure accuracy of our machine learning models.”
Messium will be in Australia in late September and early October to meet with the Agtech and Logistics Hub, growers and agricultural organisations.
Other participants in the accelerator will showcase their solutions to end-users and potential investors at the 2024 GRDC GroundUp Day at the Agtech and Logistics Hub in Toowoomba on Thursday, August 29. A range-of cutting-edge innovations will be on show, including a soil treatment that harnesses indigenous soil biology to increase nitrogen in a natural way and a ‘grain detective’ to optimise quality assessments for farmers.