Israeli precision agriculture hardware-software solution company SupPlant has announced the completion of a $10 million financing round co-led by Boresight Capital, Menomadin Foundation, Smart-Agro Fund and Mivtah Shamir. This brings to $19 million the total raised by the company.
By September 2021, SupPlant's sensor-less technology will be implemented by 500,000 farmers in Kenya and by 2022, SupPlant aims that over 2 million smallholders in Africa and India will be utilizing its technology.
SupPlant's technology will be able to save water, reduce costs, improve productivity and yield by using agronomic algorithms, artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology to help farmers achieve these goals. SupPlant measures the stress of the plant and monitors water content and plant and fruit growth patterns. These data are then combined with real-time and forecasted climatic data and projected plant growth patterns. All this info is uploaded every 10 minutes to an algorithm in the cloud, which provides simple, precise irrigation recommendations to farmers based on the integration of all this data.
SupPlant’s database holds the combined expertise of 31 crops across 14 countries, covering growing conditions from dry arid regions of the Middle East to tropical conditions in central America. SupPlant’s vision is that this system will be integrated into every irrigation command given on earth.
SupPlant’s technology was initially a hardware-software solution which grew by 1,200% in 2020, and was widely used in Mexico, South Africa, Argentina and Australia. With the new product developed, SupPlant will be providing as much of the benefits of SupPlant’s autonomous irrigation technology as possible - without requiring the investments in infrastructure required by the full system.
The new technology collects and analyzes local climatic data and unique plant and irrigation data from a Model Training Farm' that services 10,000 small growers with the same variety, providing low-cost irrigation solutions without the necessity of larger capital investments in hardware on the ground. This will allow small growers to gain the value derived from an adaptable irrigation strategy.
SupPlant CEO Ori Ben Ner said, "The funds raised in this round will allow us to speed up implementation of our new development - a fully sensor-less industry defining irrigation regime. It is far superior from any common practice available and is built for the vast majority of farmers on earth - smallholders that can’t afford access to hardware intense technology and unique knowledge. We already have strategic and disruptive agreements in place with global leaders that will allow us to reach millions of farmers in the upcoming year with this new and exciting technology."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 13, 2021
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