A new partnership between Pairtree Intelligence and Syngenta Australia, formed to deliver paddock level insights into crop productivity and sustainability options, received a financial boost after receiving a $170,000 Federal Government Accelerating Commercialisation Grant.
Announced by Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor as part of the Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Program, the funding will help further develop the data integration service, Farm Junction Point (FJP), by completing three proof of concept trials.
Pairtree Intelligence’s track record of ‘translating’ data from various on-farm agtech devices will complement Syngenta Australia’s ability to deliver farm specific disease prevention and crop health planning tools to farmers like never before.
“We are very excited to partner with global agriculture giant Syngenta on a project that has so much potential to improve outcomes for Australian farmers,” said Pairtree Co-Founder Hamish Munro.
“This is the start of something big. This project increases the accuracy of pest and disease modelling by enabling much more localised and accurate weather data from individual farms’ weather stations to inform the calculations that go into timely control application recommendations.”
“So many farmers already have agtech like digital weather stations. Our service is ‘agnostic’ in that we don’t mind which brand of weather station is used – we can integrate the data if the farmers gives us permission to do so.”
The collaboration between Pairtree and Syngenta means that farmers’ own weather data, combined with advanced weather forecasts and satellite imagery, will be used to maximise productivity by increasing the accuracy of advanced crop health tools developed by Syngenta.
Syngenta’s Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, Paul Luxton said the on-farm insights delivered in a user-friendly way is game changing. “This project will help farmers and agronomists deliver maximum productivity within the crops, by sustainably reducing weed, disease and pest pressures. It is the future of farming and one of the ways that the Australian agriculture industry will reach its target of being a $100 billion-dollar industry by 2030.”
Over the past four years, Pairtree has collaborated with key research and development bodies, including Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and SA Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA).
A key focus for Pairtree is overcoming ‘data silos’ and the issue of interoperability where different digital services and devices can’t ‘speak’ to each other. The team has proven that by enabling farmers to opt-in to sharing sensor and app data to third parties, there can be significant benefits to the farmer.
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