Smartphone app helps potato farmers predict crop yield and save water
PepsiCo has teamed up with Cambridge University to develop a smartphone app that can predict potato crop yield by photographing and analysing the leaves of the plant.PepsiCo is the holding company that owns brands such as Pepsi, Walkers, Quaker Oats, Doritos and Copella. The iPhone app is being trialled across 46 UK potato fields that supply products to PepsiCo, particularly Walker's crisps. Growers take a picture of a field and this picture is geo-tagged and sent to an FTP site for offline processing. A specially-developed model analyses the extent to which the potato leaf canopy covers the ground, taking into account different varieties of potato and soil. The model allows for growers to predict crop development and yield as well as plan for irrigation and harvesting times. The GPS coordinates attached to the image help the system assess the different places from where the photo of any one field was taken.
By: Olivia Solon, Edited by: Liat Clark
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