What do you get when you put a group of scientists, physicists, and agronomists into a working environment together? No, not a funny punchline to a joke. Rather, you get the potential for real change and innovation in the agricultural industry.
Israel-based Prospera recently announced that it has raised $7 million in new funding to help implement its crop-monitoring technologies and assist farmers in optimizing the way they use their data. Prospera, with its teams of scientific and agricultural experts, currently serves the U.S., Spain, and Mexico. On its website, the company highlights a focus on developing “computer vision technologies that continuously monitor and analyze plant health, development, and stress. Our technology captures climate and visual data from the field and provides actionable insights to growers via mobile and web.”
In a landscape of companies that give farmers ever advancing technology, Prospera hopes it’s proximal RGB camera and cloud-based software — which has an element of artificial machine intelligence built in — has real-time assets that will be advantageous to farmers. Still, there are competitors out there who have created partnerships involving monitoring and drone systems that will prove to be a barrier to Prospera’s growth.
Among Prospera’s services are pest and disease detection, water and nutrient optimization, yield monitoring and prediction, and plant development analysis.
“We can see things like how plants are growing, the color of the plants, the density and quality of flowers, berries, where the bees are, or if a disease is showing up on a leaf.” Prospera CEO and co-founder Daniel Koppel told the website Tech Crunch.
Prospera says its technology is not only scalable, but also cost-effective, which could be the keys to helping it stand out in a crowded environment.
