NEWS

System monitors sugarcane productivity

Technology developed at Unicamp has been implemented in plants in Latin America

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Researchers from Unicamp's Faculty of Agricultural Engineering (Feagri) developed a system that, when installed in sugarcane harvesters, makes it possible to create productivity maps and visualize the spatial variability of production. The technology, whose focus is Precision Agriculture (AP), is based on load cells and is the first productivity monitor for sugarcane cultivation launched commercially in the world. The system was licensed by Enalta, a company that operates in the agricultural automation market, and is capable of updating the harvested sugarcane mass in real time, as it allows data to be tabulated every five seconds.

“We were able to identify areas of higher and lower productivity, in addition to managing management to try to improve productivity. Productivity maps are the principle of precision agriculture”, says Cléber Manzoni, director of Enalta.  “Productivity maps are an important source of information for farmers who wish to manage their properties, considering the natural variability of the area, define management zones or production environments”, argues the Professor Paulo Graziano, responsible for developing the system.

Graziano says that productivity maps are not yet widely used in sugarcane management in the country. "ANDThis form of crop management is not yet strongly adopted by sugarcane producers in Brazil, unlike what happens in Colombia, Central America or Australia”, compares the professor.

Photo: Perri
Professor Paulo Graziano, responsible for developing the system

Precisely for this reason, Manzoni reveals that the technology is already being implemented and used by sugarcane plants located in countries in Central and South America, where there is a great demand for mechanisms that help identify the places with the highest sugarcane productivity. sugarcane within a plot for example. “Almost 60% of sugarcane producers in Colombia are already using the productivity monitor. Precision sugarcane agriculture is in greater demand abroad than in Brazil, as these are places that are unable to increase production per area and, therefore, need to guarantee agricultural productivity in that space intended for that.”, he explains.

Unlike the scenario found in other countries, in Brazil, there is a tendency to increase the production area and not productivity itself. Therefore, for the technology to gain space in the national market, Manzoni says that the company is already planning improvements to the technology, in order to make it cheaper and more competitive. He emphasizes that, although Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugar cane, there is still a need to improve crop management to boost productivity. “We produced almost 600 million tons (data referring to the 2016/2017 harvest), but our productivity index is low, with an average of, at most, 80 tons per hectare. In other countries, where production takes place in more restricted territories, it reaches 120 tons per hectare”, he comments.

The spokesperson for the licensed company highlights the uniqueness of the monitor developed in Feagri's laboratories, since there are production management technologies that use indirect methods – such as satellite images, for example –, but which do not reach the level of precision of a system where the entire harvest is weighed and updated in a matter of seconds. “Enalta is a company focused on sugar cane and, for this type of harvest, there was no productivity monitor on the market, unlike what already exists, for example, for grain agriculture”, he points out.

Enalta's innovation coordinator also recalls that the technology was initially designed for harvesting potatoes and adapted for sugarcane plantations, according to the company's demand. Therefore, there was a need for joint work between the University and the company to adapt to market needs. However, he remembers that all types of cultivation that involve harvesting machines with conveyor belts can use the technology, subject to adaptation to the desired crop. 

Manzoni praised the support given by the Partnerships team at the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency. “Inova always accompanied us in the procedures involving technology transfer and was a mediator between us and Feagri. Inova was a great facilitator in this more bureaucratic part”, he assesses. Professor Graziano agrees with Manzoni's assessment. “Inova’s support is essential. When we started the patent process, Inova did not exist. We followed the creation of Inova and were able to observe how important the support it provided was for the licensing and protection of the technology.”

In addition to professor Graziano, professor Oscar Antonio Braunbeck and then doctoral student Domingos Guilherme Pelegrino Cerri also participated in the development of the technology.


About Enalta

Since its foundation in 1999, it has developed equipment and programs for managing and optimizing the entire operational process, solutions for partial or total automation of activities and which offer accurate real-time data to managers, helping with monitoring and decision-making. It is recognized as one of the main agricultural automation companies, with emphasis on the implementation and management of operational processes in the field, throughout Latin America.

 

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Sugarcane harvest in the Ribeirão Preto region | Photo: Antonio Scarpinetti

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