Why agri-tech might need a different approach to boost innovations

Primarily an agrarian economy, India holds large potential for research and technological innovation in agriculture. Nevertheless, innovations in this space which is estimated to be around $24 billion, have barely scratched the surface given the myriad challenges such as low market adoption, high customer acquisition costs, lukewarm investor interest, high infrastructure costs, and more.

Compared to tech in other sectors, Indian AgriTech might need a different approach to turbocharge innovations in this space, say experts. IIIT-B, for example, takes an interdisciplinary approach and often looks at developing solutions as digital public goods.

The institution has been developing a host of AgriTech projects with the idea of introducing higher efficiency in agricultural processes. These include AutoGrow – an Autonomous greenhouse System for Precision Agriculture, Smart Greenhouse with secure long-range connectivity, a Remote Compost Monitoring system for Sustainable agriculture and AgriSense (an IoT system for with a soil monitoring device) among others.

An India-specific problem

“Autogrow, which is the autonomous greenhouse system for precision agriculture, is an autonomous system for growing food. We are trying to solve a very India-specific problem,” says Ramesh Kestur, faculty at IIIT-B.

The system seamlessly integrates biological food production with an IoT/AI-based system and includes automated greenhouse control of climatic conditions, irrigation, and nutrient supply to plants. This can provide substantial gains in increasing the efficiency of crop production while using optimal resources and thereby reducing costs.

“If you see in the West, they lack resources such as lighting and therefore cannot grow throughout the year. So, we should not imitate their solution. We have enough light, and we can grow 365 days a year. We just need to control whatever is critical for our condition,” Kestur explains.

Given the abundance of sunlight and temperature in the country, his team avoided including components like LED lights in the system which helped to reduce cost and complexity. After eliminating the unnecessary, the team then looked what needed to be controlled.

One was the inputs which were essentially water and nutrients. “We thought we will try to build a system and control those things. With this motivation, we built systems for three configurations; One is the hydroponic system. The other one is what we call the vertical system where we can vertically stack growbags. And the last is the open field.”

“It’s a non-linear control system where the inputs are continuously monitored, and the required amount of nutrition is administered. It is a control system realized with sensors and AI-ML algorithms,” notes Kestur, adding that no sensors are placed in the soil as it can lead to quick draining of battery. Instead, the temperature and moisture sensors are placed in the input tank where levels of nutrition such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are monitored.

The project is done in collaboration with the Department of Biotechnology, IIHR, Bengaluru. The wick irrigation technology developed at IIHR has been incorporated into the system.

Greenhouse monitoring

AgriSense and Smart Greenhouse Monitoring System are led by professor Jyotsna Bapat at IIIT-B. Both are sponsored by the Government of Karnataka.

The Smart Greenhouse Monitoring System aims to transform greenhouse farming by leveraging IoT to improve crop health, automate environmental controls, and facilitate remote monitoring. The idea is to enable farmers to monitor environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and pH remotely, providing real-time data for precise control over crop conditions.

The system looks at features such as real-time data monitoring utilising a network of sensors, automated control based on sensor data, remote accessibility for farmers via app and data analysis and alerts with the help of machine learning.

Optimising inputs

In agriculture finding the optimum watering level to ensure maximum output has always been a problem. Yet another challenge is the deteriorating health of soil due to over application of fertilisers. AgriSense, an IoT system developed by the institute to address these challenges, uses Agri-cone a mushroom shaped soil-monitoring device.

“We were initially looking at the bigger farms where we could help the farmers to ensure irrigation is done in the correct way. By measuring the soil moisture content and looking at the predicted forecast, we could advise them on the irrigation that should be done,” explains Bapat.

“Another aspect is the soil content and we measure carbondioxide and ammonia in it. If the soil is of good quality, then the amount of carbon dioxide will be relatively higher. If there is too much of urea or any of the other fertilizers, the amount of ammonia released would be higher. So, we can advise them based on these too.”

Inside Agri-cone, a coin battery powers various sensors for monitoring soil moisture and temperature. The sensors detect gases such as including CO₂ and ammonia. Humidity sensors track air moisture levels around plants, helping to prevent diseases and promote healthy growth.

“Right now, we have put a small battery. But the goal is to put solar surface on top of the mushroom so that it becomes completely sustainable,” Bapat notes.

“Right now, we just use Wi-Fi. But the other solution is something called LoRA. It is used for IoT a lot in Europe and in Netherlands, their entire IoT network is on LoRA. It is more power efficient, and the range is higher which makes it suitable for a vast field,” says Bapat.

Remote Compost Monitoring for sustainable agriculture.
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Compost monitoring

The team led by Bapat has also been working on a Remote Compost Monitoring system. The idea was to build a prototype for an intelligent IoT system that remotely monitors and manages compost which can then be used as fertilizer.

Bapat explains that the system developed by them can help compost Bengaluru’s garbage piles, with a lot of food waste in it, correctly while avoiding odour.

The solution developed by the team comes with a sensor hub associated with each bin to monitor pH values, temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels of the compost inside them. It also allows remote monitoring of these values and generation of alerts using a mobile phone.

Bapat notes that the solution also helps to avoid manual labour which involves a person checking and stirring the compost.

Market reception

While several such initiatives are being designed, for agri-tech solutions market adoption is always a challenge. Bapat feels that for solutions like AgriSense urban folks with vegetable gardens in the backyard could be the initial customers. “Although it is mainly designed for the farmers, if we can see some urban folks as early adopters, that will be useful,” she notes.

With regards to AutoGrow, Kestur notes that the proof of concept has been done and patent filed. The next step would be to match it to a start-up through the institute’s innovation cell to scale up the solution.

According to him AI has the potential to introduce hyper efficiency in agriculture and it’s important to build India-specific solutions with it. “It’s an opportunity for us being an agrarian economy. A whole lot of things are opening up to us. There’s so much to do in agriculture in terms of making farmers hyper efficient.”

Funding issues

While he admits that lack of funding in agritech poses a challenge to scaling up and deployment, Kestur notes that his team is trying to address problem differently.

“Reaching out to farmers is going to be difficult because the end users are too fragmented. So, we are working with Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO). We have conducted a few workshops where we have spoken to farmers to get problem statements from them. We are looking at start-ups in this space and trying to do the facilitation job. We are trying to map those start-ups to the problems presented by FPOs,” he says.

Kestur also notes that agri-tech needs to be approached differently compared to consumer tech or other sectors which attract large funding.

Public digital infra

“Agriculture is a use case where solutions should be developed as public digital infrastructure. Take the case of aadhaar. It has been successful. If it was developed by a large company, they would have been able to make billions of dollars. But it is open source for public good. We should have equivalents of that in agriculture,” he notes.

Kestur also stresses the need for interdisciplinary research. “Now we have agricultural universities. Then there are technology universities like us. So, there’s a need to do interdisciplinary research. Auto Grow is a small step in the direction. They(IIHR) bring in the domain expertise and we bring in technology.”