The Israeli company Manna Irrigation Intelligence is introducing the first satellite technology applied to the optimization of irrigation and crop monitoring in the Spanish market. It is a solution capable of offering information on soil typologies and conditions by penetrating up to 30 centimeters in the entire surface, regardless of the presence of clouds.
This new technology is truly innovative due to the amount of information it can provide compared to other sensors, such as probes, which can also penetrate the soil, but do so in a more localized way, making them unable to offer global data for an entire plot. According to the company, this technology will ensure maximum efficiency in irrigation and reduce water consumption and production costs by 30% and 15%, respectively.
The company plans to be able to market this new technology as part of its Manna solution, an application that allows any agricultural producer with over 1,000 m² of land to receive irrigation recommendations based on data algorithms (with information from different sources) on any digital device, and with a high precision of 1.5 x 1.5 meters.
Soil water balance
Manna, which started marketing its application in Spain three years ago, has improved its features. Thus, the company is now providing its own model of soil water balance, This makes it possible to know the amount of water stored that can be used by plants without the need for irrigation before a level is reached that causes them to start wilting.
The model, which requires an analysis of the composition of the soil, uses satellite images to determine the amount of evaporated water and the runoff index (difference between the water that has fallen on the soil, either by rain or irrigation, and the filtered water). This makes it possible to determine how much useful water is there on the ground for the plants to extract, thereby helping prevent stress caused by lack of irrigation.
Manna has also added a system for the automatic identification of problems affecting the crops, which is based on the analysis of three parameters: greenness, the plant's vigor and the chlorophyll levels. In case of detecting a problem at any point of the crop's growth, the solution sends an alert to the user about the situation, with recommendations on how to address it.
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