Wouter Saeys
Abstract
Agriculture is challenged to produce sufficient, high quality food for a rapidly growing population, while reducing its impact on the environment. To reach this goal, the productivity should be increased with minimal use of energy, water, fertilizers and pesticides. While automation technologies have strongly increased the labour efficiency in agriculture, they do not necessarily make the biological production processes (animal and plant production) more efficient. Actually, the possibility to farm larger areas and herds has reduced the time available to the farmer for monitoring these biosystems, while these are typically more variable than technical systems.
The aim of Smart Farming is to increase agricultural resource efficiency by applying the right treatment at the right time to every individual plant and animal. Thanks to their large information content, non-destructive character and high measurement speed, optical measurement techniques have high potential in this context. In this talk, some recent developments in the use of optical sensing technologies for increasing agricultural resource efficiency will be discussed, namely the use of NIR spectroscopy for optimal harvest time prediction in pome fruit and the use of an optical wingbeat sensor for early insect pest detection.