Growers who participate in the Dutch NPPL precision farming project got to work with the new multi-spectral Augmenta Mantis crop camera this summer. What’s their verdict?

The 2022 growing season saw the arrival of a new crop camera on arable farms in the Netherlands, the Augmenta Mantis. This multi-spectral camera is mounted on the roof of the tractor. The camera scans the crop or soil 20 metres forward and 40 metres wide in high resolution.

The crop camera costs around €17,000, and creates biomass images in no time. The device can present the full-width image in 128 separate tracks. The camera can be used for real-time precision applications, where the leaf mass of crop or weeds is normative, as well as for scans that can be used to track crop development or worked into prescription maps.

The Augmenta Mantis can be seen as a substantially improved greenseeker, like the Yara N-sensor or Fritsmeyer. All look ahead from the tractor, scan the crop and produce an image of the density of the vegetation. A big difference is that the Mantis gives a full multispectral camera image over the whole 40-45 metres. Currently, several dozen systems have now been sold in the Netherlands.

Several participants in the ‘National Precision Farming Laboratory’ started working with the Augmenta Mantis system last summer. The crop sensor is seen as an asset in (data collection for) precision agriculture. In terms of working under difficult light conditions, reliability of the image of leaf mass and data processing capabilities, the Dutch growers say it still needs improvement.

“True,” says Zondag, “and we have never claimed otherwise. There is a difference with sensors of for instance the Yara-N type with an active light sensor. With that, you can also work in the dark. Augmenta is also working on that. The first experiments indicate that there are good possibilities to achieve results with light of a limited wavelength, the red edge spectrum. In doing so, more differentiation should then be achieved in full green crops, as saturation occurs less quickly. This should be ready by the end of 2023. It is not expected that this light will be as wide as the 40 to 45 metres width that the sensor can handle. It is still a limitation now, though, so it is something that will have to be done at some point. It’s coming soon.” With My John Deere, prescription maps cannot be created based on the Augmenta Mantis data.

“We checked that in the United States, where the camera is widely used, and indeed you cannot get the shape files read into My John Deere. However, there are several solutions to this limitation. With a small diversion via another programme, like Trimble’s Farmworks, it can be done. Data from the Augmenta sensor can also be imported via WUR’s Farmmaps platform.”

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