Last December the public-private partnership TTADDA we finished this inspiring four year project, below a short summary of the impact we managed to realize together with all the partners involved.

The TTADDA project generated international attention promoted actively by FME, project lead and the Agricultural counsellor at the Dutch embassy in Japan. In that way this project is a precedent for more agri-tech collaborations with international partners. Novel in this public-private partnership were the potato field trials in as well Japan as in NL in which the Japanese partners received additional funding from their Ministry of Agriculture. Scientific papers were published by WR and NARO, shared on the website – www.ttadda.com on which we have published all results and videos.

A few key results that we are proud of to list here are for instance, the method development by OnePlanet to use electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to measure how many potatoes grow in the soil and how big they are. For this purpose, sensors are mounted on a bucket with electrodes are sensitive to electrical currents. This makes it possible to make a 3D map of the subsoil, on which potatoes are visible. The practical tests have been carried out in Japan with volcanic soil with excellent results. Next to that the successfully tested and developed precision camera-based potato yield mapping system with Kubota. This visual yield mapping system is the next step in closing the precision agriculture cycle, providing crystal-clear insights in the potatoes harvested per square meter. Until now, automated yield mapping for root crops only measured gross yield by weight, which gave no indication on quality parameters. The prototype visual yield mapping system is able to distinguish every individual tuber, resulting in a count, size-measurement and weight-estimation. With this tool, farmers can start seeing the effects of their in-season decisions on product quality, which especially in seed potato production is key. We can now start closing the precision agriculture cycle by accurately measuring our results and by using these results to improve our management the next growing season, which is an important step forward.

Next to that within the TTADDA project UAV images were taken of 203 different Solynta potato hybrids in NL every week to measure soil coverage of the canopy. To compare the results of the image analysis with the standard method, ground coverage as measured manually as well. Despite some difficulties with weeds in the field, soil coverage in time determined by the drone images showed a high correlation with the manual measurements. These results led to a higher interest in performing measurements in breeding trials using drones at Solynta and NARO. TTADDA also came up with a novel solution utilizing DeepLab implemented in detectron 2 which enables an automated system using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to process data, including Digital Surface Models and orthomosaics. This system effectively evaluates critical crop traits like height, volume, and coverage for different potato varieties of Solynta and also at the field trials in Japan at NARO. The study also examines the impact of UAV flight parameters on data accuracy by comparing altitudes, aiming to identify optimal conditions for assessing phenotypic traits. The research’s goal is to revolutionize potato variety assessment through UAV technology and advanced data processing, streamlining UAV-generated data analysis to enhance precision in estimating essential crop properties and contributing to the development of superior potato varieties with improved quality and yield.

In this video we have summarized our findings: