AgriSens-DEMMIN 4.0 (AgriSens) 02.03.2020 – 28.02.2025

Global change has fuelled a number of environmental changes, such as climate change, changes in water resources, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, ecosystems and, ultimately, agricultural productivity. Globalisation and adaptation to changing environmental conditions have led to drastic changes in agricultural economies. Finding efficient and sustainable solutions to adapt to the effects of global change is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. Digitalisation in agriculture plays a decisive role in this.

Background and goals

AgriSens-DEMMIN 4.0 aims to tackle current and future challenges of digitalisation through the interaction of science, industry and end users. The focus is on the generation and utilisation of geodata, as this is essential for the efficient management of agricultural land. They are already being incorporated into operational processes in a variety of ways, e.g. to determine the position of vehicles, to plan sampling, to record soil and plant conditions and to estimate yields. In many cases, satellites and increasingly also autonomously operating flying objects (UAVs) provide the data basis for this.

Sub-goals

With the planned AgriSens-DEMMIN 4.0 experimental field, we are addressing key areas for the field of crop production in relation to digitalisation topics through to end-to-end solutions for geoinformation data. The aim is to precisely define use cases for remote sensing data from satellite and UAV-supported systems for specific crop cultivation issues, to further and newly develop methods and to make this knowledge easily available to anyone interested. In this way, we expect to strengthen the acceptance and use of these valuable data sources to optimise operational processes in digital crop production. As a result, the focus of the experimental field is on

• Analysing the status of the use of geoinformation data in agriculture
• Creation of methodological foundations
• Conception and realisation of application examples as demonstrators of potential
• Analysis of utilisation potential in the economy
• Conception and development of demonstration services
• Knowledge and technology transfer from science to industry and society

Methodological approach

The AgriSens-DEMMIN 4.0 experimental field comprises applied research based on the methodological principles with a focus on the defined use cases. The demonstrators to be developed here comprise both the methodological and technical sub-components, including validation of the results and analyses of transferability to other agricultural areas. Individual applications are to be further developed into prototype services that can be easily integrated into operational decision-making processes by providing suitable interfaces.

Expected results

MLU is represented in or leads the following work packages as part of AgriSens-DEMMIN 4.0:

WP 2.2 UAV parameters:

• Development of intelligent recording strategies
• Recording and provision of agrometeorological parameters to characterise the microclimate
• Relief and vegetation indices to characterise fine morphology (micro relief)

WP 4 – Use case 3: Airborne stone collection

• Provision of geoservice fine detection of stones

WP 4 – Use case 4: Irrigation technology

• Site-specific water demand calculation derived from remote sensing data

WP 6.2 UAV services

• Prototypical provision of a UAV service for stone detection