Expert365: Efficiency-Boosting Strategies for the Agriculture Sector

With digitization becoming the order of the day, Internet of Things (IoT) is the future of technological trends. The burgeoning technology is seeping into every possible industry vertical including the agricultural industry. The agricultural sector is not traditionally a technology intensive field, but IoT is set to bring about a massive revolution in the industry. Pioneering this race to technically enable the Australian agriculture market is Expert365. Founded in 2015, the organization disseminates IOT solutions in Australia, in collaboration with European counterparts, to predominantly address the agricultural sector. A brain child of Professor Vishy Karri, CEO and John Pham, COO; the duo championed system integration by bringing together multi-disciplinary, cross-continental expertise into Australia and building robust, reliable and sustainable IOT solutions.” While laying the bricks in Brisbane and Sydney, Expert365 has branched out its services to farms, vineyards, logistics companies and the horticulture industry by employing a merger of M2M connectivity with cloud based software tools which are built on a sound mathematical and scientific basis.

Expert365 have diversified their clients in various agricultural divisions and is successfully operational among the blue berry farmers, cucumber farmers, tomato hot houses, cotton farmers and celery farmers. The credit of earning the trust of all these farmers, with little or no knowledge of IoT, goes to their innovation-driven technical team which includes computer scientists, agricultural scientists, mechatronics engineers, software specialists to power system analysts. The organization holds IRRIGNET, QWIC365 and TRAPNET with high regard as their solutions of paramount importance to address the fundamental horticultural riddles.

IrrigNet is an IoT tool which is functional in collaboration and partnership with Dunav Net. This App-built solution complements a Microsoft Azure cloud-based platform and has earned its reputation for accurately determining the 'optimum amount of water required per square meter'.

The calculation is done based on the soil type, soil integrity and weather forecasts. QWIC365 has been designed to work in conjunction with IrrigNet. It is a Quantitative Water Irrigation Controller, ensuring that 'exact amount of water per square meter of soil is irrigated'. “Implementing these two solutions alone can reduce water consumption by 15 percent as well as increase yield by 15%. We currently have mechanisms designed for twelve different crop types, and estimate that up to 30,000 Australian farmers can potentially benefit from these solutions,” Karri adds.

This App-built solution complements a Microsoft Azure cloud-based platform and has earned its reputation for accurately determining the optimum amount of water required per square meter

TrapNet, another DunavNet partnership production, measures the local prevalence of fruit flies and other insects that are potentially unfavorable to overall yield. This product works through photographic techniques. Karri says, “It is important to get the IOT solution working successfully over several horticulture verticals. We currently have over a dozen solutions for vegetables, fruit and salad farmers where the intent is to implement this solution for all of them."

Picking up an aggressive pace for the years to come, the company has set a sales target of 1000 farm installations within the next three years. Additionally, Expert365 intends to branch out its services to farmers dealing with carrot, sugar beet, onion and potato. The company is also working to introduce advanced agricultural IOT technologies including CROP 365– an IOT solution specifically designed for broad acre farming with remote sensing technologies and state of the art analytics.