Southern Mapping launches the new Verde Crop Analytics service for Africa
Southern Mapping Company (SMC), a South African company who provides LiDAR, Hyperspectral, Thermal surveys and mapping, as well as satellite imagery and GIS services for a variety of sectors, has been appointed by Airbus to introduce the new Verde Crop Analytics system to agricultural markets across the African continent.
Although a number of crop monitoring systems using quantitative satellite-based products such as vegetation indices (e.g. NDVI) emerged over the past few years, none of them provides true qualitative or calibrated information. Verde, on the other hand, provides unrivalled crop analytics based on scientific reflectance models from which biophysical parameters are derived that has significant value for modelling of crop development
Examples of these products have been tested extensively in Europe and include:
- Cover (Fractional cover is the % crops covering the ground)
- LAI (Leaf Area Index is the number of square meters of green leaves in 1 sqm of the ground)
- CHL (the content of chlorophyll A & B per unit area of leaves)
From the above illustration, it is clear that NDVI products tend to saturate when the crop canopy closes, while Verde products such as LAI manage to distinguish actual crop variation required to make informed decisions.
Verde products are derived from imagery acquired by a number of different optical satellites orbiting the globe on a continuous basis. Airbus uses sophisticated mathematical calibration models to ensure that all products are consistent and comparable not only throughout a particular growing season (as shown below) but also between years.
They also ensure that proper screening is done by removing clouds and shadows from the imagery before inclusion in final processing. Regular updates of spatial and temporal crop development, pro-active detection of stress factors, and inter-annual comparisons enable end-users to make well-informed precision farming decisions on a weekly basis.
Significant relationships of Verde analytics with biomass and seasonal Nitrogen uptake has already been demonstrated. Apart from current or in-season data, historical information can also be provided for benchmarking and planning purposes.
It can be concluded that the benefits of Verde are not limited to producers alone, but should be invaluable for crop advisors, input suppliers, co-operatives, financiers, insurers and grain traders alike. No expensive or complicated software or hardware suites are required since products are published via an API on a platform of your choice i.e. cellular phone, tablet or PC.
We would like to invite you to grab this opportunity with both hands by contacting us today.
For further information contact Nic Badenhorst :
Phone: +27 (0)82 782 0533
Mail: nic@southernmapping.com
Website: Click Here for their website
If you have any questions or want to become a featured company on our website to broaden the scope of your business, please send us a mail on info@agri4africa.com.
