Modeling and prediction of below-ground performance of agricultural biological products in precision agriculture

Abstract

A below-ground agricultural biological performance modeling approach in precision agriculture combines customized field modeling with machine learning techniques for environmental matching of variables to describe a below-surface soil state, to understand and predict the performance of soil-active agricultural biological products such as bio-pesticides, bio-stimulants, plant growth regulators, and other biologically-derives soil adjuvants. The modeling approach characterizes the influence of environmental relationships on the performance of such soil-active agricultural biological products to develop a suite of predictive models to provide notifications, advisories, and recommendations for appropriate products for individual fields.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to the field of precision agriculture. Specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method of assessing the impact of biological processes in a soil system, based on correlated relationships between environmental variables, to predict a future below-ground performance of soil-active agricultural biological products.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Agricultural biologicals are products derived from or composed of living organisms that are used in agriculture to enhance plant productivity and fertility or to provide protection from pests and diseases. Such products inhibit or mitigate the effects of organisms or environmental conditions that have adverse consequences on crop growth, vigor, or yield, or that stimulate crop growth, vigor, or yield, either directly or through effects on an intermediary substance or organism. They include bio-pesticides such as fungi, bacteria and other organisms that help protect pl...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent is about using machine learning and customized field models to identify and predict the performance of agricultural pests and bioremediation products. The technical effect is the development of a more targeted approach to protect crops from pests and promote soil health.

Problems solved by technology

Such field testing is a major component of the high cost and extensive time required to commercialize such biological agricultural products.

Predicting performance and writing recommendations for many agricultural biological products is more challenging and requires more extensive field testing compared to most agricultural chemical products due to greater environmental sensitivity.

Identifying the relevance of different and temporally-variant environment factors is also complicated when the product itself is a living organism that is strongly influenced by environment, and activity is slower and efficacy is lower as compared to optimal environmental conditions.

Identifying the required environmental considerations for performance and writing locally adapted recommendations is particularly challenging for soil-active agricultural biological products such as bio-pesticides and bio-stimulants.

There is an additional technical challenge in evaluating such considerations, as characterizing the soil environment in an agricultural field is difficult, expensive and disruptive.

Nonetheless, predicting or understanding the performance of soil-active products such as bio-pesticides and bio-stimulants is limited by lack of understanding of below-surface conditions in existing modeling paradigms.

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