New technology offers the agricultural industry access to highly accurate biomass images unimpeded by cloud cover

BASF Digital Farming GmbH and VanderSat, provider of global satellite-observed data, products and services over land with a special emphasis on water and crops, have signed a commercial agreement, which will integrate a fully operational VanderSat's Cloud-free Biomass product with xarvio™ FIELD MANAGER solution from BASF Digital Farming, developer of digital solutions for crop optimization and the digitalization of agriculture.

BASF Digital Farming GmbH will offer the agricultural industry access to high quality, consistent and cloud-free biomass images from satellites and unimpeded by cloud cover. Using this technology, through xarvio FIELD MANAGER, will enable farmers to have daily faster access to biomass images, which enables to consistent monitoring of crop growth and leads to improved agronomic decisions. The results are optimizing crop production, saving time and money, and supporting efforts to ensure sustainability on farms by enhancing application efficiency of crop inputs. The technology is expected to be available in North America by the end of March 2021.

Cloud-free Biomass is the result of the collaboration and testing by xarvio and VanderSat teams over the past two years. The technology was successfully tested in Germany, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Brazil and Canada. The new product has a high spatial resolution (10m x 10m) and provides a single, consistent metric biomass of crops, which allows farmers to compare the performance of several fields over a large area or in different growing seasons.

In contradistinction to Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) biomass images from satellites, which are inaccessible on cloudy days and only measure spectral greenness, Сloud-free Biomass also measures biophysical parameters and water content in vegetation, which helps to calculate continually and accurately all stages of crop growth during the entire growing season.

According to Jeff Spencer, xarvio Global Technology & Data lead, BASF Digital Farming, giving farmers access to quality biomass images provides greater oversight and helps to reduce risk by ensuring that any action needed can be taken almost immediately.

BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division is one of the industry leaders in working with farmers, agricultural professionals and pest management experts and others. The company helps farmers to increase the yields and the quality of their crops by using their technology for precise agriculture, including chemical and biological crop protection, soil management, seeds and traits, plant health, pest control and digital farming.

For more information, visit its website.

xarvio Digital Farming Solutions is a brand, which offers digital products, based on a crop model platform that provide independent agronomic advice for specific fields.

Click here to check more information.

VanderSat is one of the leading providers of global satellite-observed data, products and services over land with a special emphasis on water and crops, which provides its customers with essential insights about soil and crop conditions by applying mathematical expertise to raw data from a constellation of satellites from several space agencies including ESA, NASA and JAXA. The use of passive microwave technology is critical to their business.

Further details can be found on company’s website.