In the ever-evolving world of agriculture, effective pest management plays a critical role in ensuring optimal crop health and maximising yields.
Traditionally, farmers and agronomists relied on manual monitoring techniques and reactive pest control measures, leading to inefficiencies and suboptimal results.
In recent years, the advent of advanced technologies have revolutionised farmers’ methods to monitor and manage pests.
Meet Trapview!
Developed by the Slovenian company EFOS, Trapview is an AI-powered platform for monitoring and forecasting pest and insect populations.
Talking about TrapView, Matej Stefancic, CEO and co-founder of EFOS, says, “Our company’s mission has always been to strive for a clean environment and safe food, professionally and privately.”
“Initially, the business focused on animal tracking and identification through veterinary information systems. During one of the larger projects, an inquiry about monitoring an insect pest was raised by the customer. Having an idea that was aligned with our strategy and values led us to develop Trapview,” he explains.
What exactly does TrapView do?
Trapview is a novel crop protection decision support solution providing near-real-time automated monitoring and accurate forecasts about pest insect development.
Stefancic says forecasts are based on data collected by automated traps coupled with AI-enhanced machine vision and machine learning processing that allows much greater accuracy of information about pest populations than ever before.
The company’s automated traps send real-time data to farmers about pest situations in their fields and use artificial intelligence to analyse and predict pest dynamics.
Farmers can then make informed and timely crop protection decisions in a targeted manner instead of spraying entire crops with pesticides preventively.
TrapView’s AI processing tech
Stefancic says AI has a twofold responsibility within TrapView’s data processing framework.
Primarily, it leverages its machine vision capabilities to analyse images captured by pest insect traps, effectively detecting and marking target pests.
The quantity of markings serves as an indicator of the pest population, and these pest statistics are one of the critical input data for AI’s second role: machine learning.
“At the machine learning step, multiple data streams key to understanding pest development are fed to the algorithms and then the system processes. This provides an accurate prediction of the trends of the adult pest population as well as pest development stages,” he tells Silicon Canals.
The platform provides multiple pieces of information about pest populations, including their present and future trends.
“The information is used to decide upon the optimal timing and placement of crop protection applications, whatever type of crop protection is used – conventional chemical or biological,” explains Stefancic.
“This information is crucial for making the right decisions in crop protection,” he adds.
TrapView monitors more than 60 insect species in over 50 countries around the world. The crops range from tomatoes in Brazil and almonds in California to vines in Italy and salad greens in France and Spain.
“The one we would like to point out is the trial we commissioned to an independent third party in France, studying the effect of the Trapview solution in an apple orchard,” he states.
“The trial results show the number of treatments were significantly reduced while keeping the identical quality of apples. The reduction of spraying application greatly depends upon pest pressure and IPM practices. However, knowing when, where and if pest insects will be a farmer’s problem, and reducing pest insect scouting related field visits by over 80 per cent is something we always deliver,” he reveals.
Installation and assistance
Trapview says it prides itself on its user-friendly nature, catering to farmers and agricultural professionals. Trapview’s applications are designed to be intuitive, ensuring a seamless experience.
Elaborating on the technicalities of the Trapview platform, Stefancic describes, “However, there is the need to interpret the data first-time users get in a specific part of the season. Therefore, we have a customer care team onboarding users and helping users understand their data. We also provide trap installation and other “auxiliary” services that ensure as best user experience as possible.”
Roadmap
Stefancic says “The R&D roadmap focuses on the development of solutions for major pests in key crops in our focus countries, on building our devices with more sustainable materials, and on further expanding our Trapview apps with new features and improved UX.”