A day of high-tech and agriculture at SLU

– For us who arranged the event, it was a great success, says Abozar Nasirahmadi, who is a professor of digitalization with a focus on agricultural technology at SLU. The commitment and willingness to cooperate we encountered during the day was very gratifying. And we had the powers of the weather on our side.

In the first lecture of the morning, Per Frankelius from Agtech Sweden and Linköping University gave a historical exposé of the digital development in Swedish agriculture, but also a look into the future. As an example of what is in the works, he mentioned virtual fences for grazing animals – a technology that was recently tested in a licentiate thesis from SLU and Rise.

Other speakers included Ard Nieuwenhuizen from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, who spoke about autonomous robots in tomorrow's crop production, Muthukumar Bagavathiannan from Texas A&M University in the USA, who presented advances in weed recognition and spraying with drones in the USA, and Mats Söderström from SLU, who spoke about digital soil mapping with sensors. Camilla Persson from RISE spoke about AgrifoodTEF, a European network of facilities that supports companies in developing AI and robotic solutions for agriculture, while Pedro La Hera from SLU described the robotization in forestry.

The participants were also able to take advantage of around 25 posters that gave examples of what is going on both at national and international levels. One example from dairy production was Gigacow - SLU's investment in large-scale data collection from dairy farms - which is an important resource for both research and practice. Several posters covered projects that Abozar Nasirahmadi himself is involved in, both at SLU and at universities abroad. Topics included robots for insect pest control, for collecting cow manure from pastures, for locating and removing snails from lettuce heads, and automated fruit thinning and harvesting in apple orchards.

During the afternoon outdoor session, various autonomous robots in agriculture were demonstrated. Göran Bergkvist, professor of weed ecology at SLU, also participated, and spoke about a new project, “Three Rows”. It involves the development of a completely new type of cultivation system, where grain is grown with a perennial “service crop” and where a robot will carry out all cultivation operations except harvesting.

Abozar Nasirahmadi and his colleagues were very satisfied with the day and believe that the networking that arose has laid the foundation for several new collaborations.