There’s new smart spray technology from precision ag startup Sentera that could lower herbicide usage by up to 70%.

It’s called Aerial WeedScout. It uses aerial imaging from a drone and artificial intelligence to detect weeds. Then it creates prescriptions within 24 hours that can be executed through any precision sprayer. Sentera CTO Eric Taipale explains what separates Aerial WeedScout from other precision spraying options on the market.

“We’re fortunate at Sentera, we’ve got a fantastic machine learning, data science group, but we’re also one of the largest producers of sensors. We actually design and build them in the U.S. On more than 80 acres per hour of flight, we’re capturing 1½-millimeter imagery of that field. Every pixel is 1½ millimeter. To see a 6-millimeter weed, you’ve got to have more than 1 pixel of green. This is really phenomenal. We have a direct georeferencing technology that allows us to dramatically increase the rate of coverage where we can go and map a whole field and, on an hour-by-hour basis, we can stay ahead of that sprayer.”

Aerial WeedScout is being used this summer on about 10,000 acres in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota as part of an Early Access Program. Commercial release is scheduled for 2025.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.