Deficit irrigation is the practice of intentionally giving crops less water than they’d typically receive during
select stages of development. The idea isn’t to deprive the plant, but to apply a mild, controlled stress that can slow vegetative growth or fruit expansion in ways that benefit the crop. Done well, this strategy can sharpen fruit quality, reduce disease pressure, conserve water, and even improve overall return on investment.

Phytech has partnered exclusively with Suterra® to bring you the most advanced, cost-effective mating disruption solution on the market.

Sign up by December 31, 2024 and receive FREE installation of Puffers® and complimentary in-canopy temperature & humidity sensors!

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Smarter Together: Rivulis Irrigation and Phytech announce strategic partnership to advance sustainable agriculture. Rivulis, a global climate and irrigation leader, and Phytech, a pioneer in digital farming solutions, are excited to announce their new strategic partnership.

This collaboration represents a major step forward in sustainable farming, combining Rivulis' global presence and leadership in micro irrigation products and solutions with Phytech's cutting-edge real-time plant health and hydraulic monitoring and automation technology.
As part of the move Rivulis will integrate its cloud-based precision irrigation subsidiary, Manna Irrigation, into Phytech. Phytech’s data driven approach, initially focused on aiding agronomic decision-making through real-time plant/tree health monitoring, has gradually expanded into real time hydraulic monitoring and automation of grower’s irrigation and fertigation infrastructure, providing farmers with a comprehensive view of their entire irrigation and fertigation system and further improving efficiency and sustainability.

Rivulis’ CEO, Richard Klapholz, stated, “This partnership marks a pivotal moment for us at Rivulis as we join forces with Phytech to drive unprecedented advancements in agricultural technology. The integration of ReelView and Manna within Phytech enables a seamless digital journey for farmers, providing a tiered approach for farmers to integrate increasingly sophisticated ag-tech capabilities into their operations. Together, we are setting new standards for efficiency and sustainability in farming practices worldwide.”

Phytech’s CEO, Oren Kind remarked, “Our initial success in encouraging growers to adopt technology stemmed from addressing real needs, such as alleviating the loneliness of agronomic decision-making and enabling growers a real-time problem detection in their hydraulic systems. To make this initial success affect agriculture on a global scale requires us to partner with world leaders. Being chosen by Rivulis, one of the global leaders in the irrigation world, as their technology partner, is a significant milestone that will accelerate our ability to scale globally, helping growers embark on a much-needed digital transformation toward more sustainable and efficient practices”.

Manna’s CEO Hovav Lapidot added, “Joining hands with Phytech allows us to expand our technological capabilities and reach. Our shared vision for a smarter, better way of farming is now significantly closer to widespread adoption.”

Click to read the full announcement

Latam Territory Manager Ilan Liwski and the Peruvian team are helping local winegrowers transform digitally by connecting them to their vines and infrastructure via Phytech's IoT and Plant-AI platform. 

"With the help of dendrometers, soil moisture probes, and irrigation sensors, our customers get real-time, accurate, data on the block level", says Liwsky, "Growers then get a clear picture of their vines' needs, and can deliver irrigation plans accordingly. 

Plus: getting pressure alerts and pressure maps of each block helps ensure proper delivery, according to what was planned. As we keep expanding our customer base in South America, with different types of crops and farming operations, we feel fortunate to have forward-thinking growers that share our vision".  

Explore labor solutions and innovative techniques for enhancing fruit quality and quantity. Cody Ashurst from Phytech will be presenting on post-veraison RDI and dehydration mitigation for berries.

Date: April 5, 2024
Time: 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Hotel Thatcher
13401 US - 101
Hopland, CA 95449

Register

In our latest Customer Testimonial, Todd Madden, Viticulture Manager at Bonterra Organic Estates, explains how Phytech and Cody Ashurst have helped Bonterra Organic Estates overcome the challenges of drought and excessive heat. As well as better understand the different terroir throughout the vineyards to irrigate more uniformly and efficiently.

“By understanding our soils and looking at the growth of the vines via the dendrometers we’ve been able to limit water usage in certain areas where we are close to a river, or areas where we have really good soil moisture due to excessive rains. We’ve been able to increase water where we have a hillside block, or our soil type is more rocky or sandy. Instead of having an overview of white [varieties] get this much water and red [varieties] get this much water, we’ve dialed it in block by block and ranch by ranch” - Todd Madden

Thank you, Bonterra Organic Estates, we at Phytech are proud to be a part of your mission to elevate the organic wine industry.

We're delighted to share that Phytech has been recognized as "AI-based AgTech Company of the Year 2023 by he AgTech Breakthrough Awards.

We'd like to thank AgTech Breakthrough for the recognition. This couldn't have been done without our customers and partners around the world who share our vision and are leading digital transformation of our industry. 

No Two Plots Are The Same

"At Phytech, we measure and analyse tens of thousands of agricultural plots every day" explains Avi Braun, who heads the development of our AI-based Algorithm. "This provides us with a wealth of data to learn from regarding the expected behavior and performance of various plants in different climates around the globe. However, we also recognize that farming plots can exhibit different behaviors, even when all known variables are equal. In other words, two plots with the same crop type, age, and nominal soil type may still perform differently due to hidden factors that are not apparent to farmers or us"

"When it comes to recommending irrigation timing (and soon also quantity!), we learn from both the collective behavior of similar plots and the performance of each individual plot"

Combining Data From The Plant, The Soil and The Climate

"For our Plant-Dynamic Soil Thresholds, our approach involves utilizing the data generated by our soil and plant sensors, as well as climatic data. We assess the plant's performance at the end of each day and correlate it with the soil moisture level for that day, taking into consideration the weather conditions and the water demand by the atmosphere on that particular date", 

The plant dynamic refill-Line continuously adapts itself:

Click to learn more on how we harness the power of AI. 

Ready To Transform Your Farm? Click Here To Set Up A Demo

About Phytech:

Phytech is currently helping more than 900 of the world’s largest growers optimize their production by enabling them to monitor, plan and control their operations with an end-to-end Ag-Operating System

By being connected directly to their plants and irrigation infrastructure via a Plant-AI and IoT digital platform, farmers can optimize their irrigation, nutrition, and pest & disease management. Phytech offers subscription-based model with hassle-free installation, maintenance, and full agronomic support.

Phyetch in numbers:

• Phytech currently monitors over 30 million trees
• Over 100k IoT devices
• In Washington: 8 out of 10 of the largest apple growers, accounting for 40% of the market, are powered by Phytech
• In California: 40% of the almond market are customers powered by Phytech
• In Israel: 90% of the avocado market are growers powered by Phytech 

Sustainability impact:

• In California: Between 2019-2021 Phytech users used 25% less water each year compared to UC Davies recommendation
• In Australia: Phytech’s almond customers managed to save 80 billion liters in 2019 thanks to irrigating differently between varieties and based on real-time water demand.

Phytech offers Unique monitoring and automation capabilities combined with plant-agronomic knowledge. An A-Z digital IoT platform consisting of a Network of sensors and apps to help growers manage irrigation, nutrition, and pest & disease with:

• Tree/fruit-based irrigation management
• Irrigation system monitoring
• Automation - Close the loop from the crop to the drop
• Per block granular climate monitoring Temperature and humidity
• Farm management and planning tool (irrigation, nutrition, pest and disease)

Coming soon: Ag-inputs As a Service:

• Fertilizer delivery (Nutrition management) 
• Pheromones(Pest and Disease management)

About AgTechBreakthrough

Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the AgTechBreakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in agricultural and food technologies, services, companies and products. The AgTechBreakthrough Awards program provides a forum for public recognition around the achievements of AgTech companies and solutions in categories including farm management, indoor farming, automation, IoT and robotics, food quality, analytics and more. 

All award nominations are fully analyzed, evaluated and scored by AgTechBreakthrough's expert panel of judges, representing a mix of technical, business, academic and marketing expertise within the industry. The evaluation criteria for the AgTech Breakthrough Awards program are focused around the concept of innovation.

For more information visit AgTechBreakthrough.com

As temperatures continue to rise sharply all across the northern hemisphere, growers need to shorten their reaction time to extreme weather conditions. The Columbia Basin area of Washington, for example, is experiencing a staggering 4 degree increase in average temperatures. 

By integrating real-time climate monitoring with Phytech's automatic valve control, growers have a simple tool to react to heat waves by first being notified and then activating a pre-planned cooling template on the Planner app. 

Yoav S., Pest Management and Climate Monitoring Manager: "Reaction time is ever more important to protect crops' health and productivity when climate conditions are abruptly changing. The new integration between our automation and monitoring capabilities makes it easier for growers to respond".

Roey Dayan , Automation Product Manager: "Customers who have installed weather stations or temperature and humidity sensors in an area, can easily define a threshold that will trigger an alert. Once a mobile push notification has been received, clicking on it opens the cooling template and the grower can press "run" and activate cooling"

As the word "AI" sweeps across the globe, it's time to deep dive and understand how we use the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to leverage our in-field IoT data streams, and help growers make smart irrigation decisions in real-time.

Avi Braun, who heads the development of our AI-based Algorithm explains in this post.

No Two Plots Are The Same

"At Phytech, we measure and analyse tens of thousands of agricultural plots every day. This provides us with a wealth of data to learn from regarding the expected behavior and performance of various plants in different climates around the globe. However, we also recognize that farming plots can exhibit different behaviors, even when all known variables are equal. In other words, two plots with the same crop type, age, and nominal soil type may still perform differently due to hidden factors that are not apparent to farmers or us.

When it comes to recommending irrigation timing (and soon also quantity!), we learn from both the collective behavior of similar plots and the performance of each individual plot. 

Combining Data From The Plant, The Soil and The Climate

For our Dynamic Soil Thresholds, our approach involves utilizing the data generated by our soil and plant sensors, as well as climatic data. We assess the plant's performance at the end of each day and correlate it with the soil moisture level for that day, taking into consideration the weather conditions and the water demand by the atmosphere on that particular date. 

The plant dynamic refiil-Line continuously adapts itself:

Training The Machine

By analyzing the entire system—soil, plant, and atmosphere—we can gain insights into the soil moisture conditions that are more likely to cause stress to the plant. To achieve this, we apply our customized online training algorithm to continually retain and refine our estimation of the threshold as the season progresses and the plant undergoes different phenological stages.

For the Soil-Prediction algorithm, we apply Supervised Machine Learning techniques where we learn from the ‘history’ of each soil sensor what would be the soil-moisture level in the future if it will not be watered.

Learning From The Past To Predict The Future

For our predictions to be accurate we first validate and clean the data of each sensor and correcting its reading to account for the influence of temperature on the measured values. We then use Ensemble Regression Trees model to predict the rate at which the soil will dry in the coming days. In our model-training and predictions we also take into account historic and future weather conditions. Similar to the Dynamic Soil Thresholds, we use on-line training to keep refining and improving our models every day as collect more data. 

1 Day To Refill Prediction

https://www.phytech.com/post/harnessing-the-power-of-ai-to-make-intelligent-irrigation-decisions

We're happy to share our latest Plant and Planner app update, May 24th, designed to help growers simplify and optimize their day-to-day horticultural practices.

*Pls note that to enjoy the latest version of the Plant App customers must actively update the app on Google Play (android phones) or the App store (iOS phones)

Highlights:

• Planner on Plant Mobile  - See Planned Irrigations On The Plot View

• Plant Web - The Soil Data Features Are Here!

  • Soil Saturation Line, Automatic Refill Line, Soil Prediction

• Plant Mobile - Show Plots Below Refill Line On Soil Map

• Plant Mobile - Active Irrigation Alerts On Plant Map 

• Planner 

  • Temperature Trigger For Cooling Template

  • Activate Now Function for Template

  • Cooling Performance Improvement

Let's Grow!

See the planned irrigation for plots in the same view where historical irrigation, plant, and soil data are presented.

Correlate the soil prediction and planned irrigations to easily make smart irrigation decisions.

*Pls note that to enjoy the latest version of the Planner App only Android customers must actively update the app on Google Play (android phones). iOS users don't have to actively update their apps

Let's see a real-life example in 3 simple steps...

Plant Web - Soil Data Features

All the great soil monitoring features on the mobile are now available also on the web plot graph: Soil Saturation Line, Automatic Refill Line, Soil Prediction, and an option to see soil scale normalized to saturation.

Plant Mobile - Show Plots Below Refill Line on Soil Map

The plot below the refill line is marked by a red rectangle.

Plant Mobile - Active Irrigation Alerts on Plant Map

Plots with an active alert on a hydraulic component are shown on the plant map.

• In areas where temperature sensors have been installed, clients will be able to set cooling templates based on the temperature set point.

• A push notification will be sent to the relevant users when the temperature in the area exceeds the set point.

• Clicking on the notification leads to the cooling template, which can be activated immediately.

"Activate Now" Function for Template – Planner Mobile & Web

• The "Activate Now" function will now execute the selected irrigations as soon as the hardware is capable of doing so.
• By clicking the "Activate Now" button, the system checks the earliest possible time for the hardware and updates the irrigation event's start time accordingly.
• Irrigation events that are scheduled close to the start time are also subject to the same mechanism.
• The idea is to allow the earliest time for irrigation scheduling, depending on the specific system installed.

https://www.phytech.com/post/adapt-irrigation-based-on-stress-and-soil-data-with-a-click

Phytech growers are used to "asking" their trees when and how much water they need to improve yields' quality and quantity while saving resources - especially water. With our newly launched Plant app update, we're happy to introduce two new features to help optimize farming operations based on what the soil "tells" them.

Irrigation optimization based on the plant and the soil

"The plant-status, obtained from measuring the micro-variations of stem diameter using our dendrometers, let the growers know how the tree "feels" (MDS, growth rate, water-demand). It also helps calibrate in real-time the refill line which simplifies and optimizes irrigation planning", explains Omer Sagee, Monitoring and Analysis products manager

The Automatic Plant-Dynamic Refill Line - Letting the soil and the plant tell you.

Soil data is super important for making smart and quick irrigation decisions. Our Plant-Dynamic refill line algorithm constantly calibrates plant and climate data to find the soil moisture level below which plant stress is likely to occur. It updates during the season in response to changing field conditions and plant phenological stage. In short, growers should irrigate to stay above this line. This feature includes:

• Automatic calculation of refill line - the point below which the probability of plant stress increases significantly.
• The line constantly "learns" from the relation between climate, MDS, and soil moisture.
• The algorithm is trained to detect stress caused by low soil moisture and to ignore stress events related to extreme weather.

Grower? Click to schedule a demo

7-Day Outlook -  Soil Moisture Prediction

• Hourly prediction of root zone soil moisture - 7 day outlook.
• “Days to refill” - the number of days until critically low soil moisture is expected, without irrigation or rain.
• "Time to irrigate" - an indication that directly connects you to the Planner app and allows quick irrigation planning. 

Grower? Click to schedule a demo

In central Washington, the main focus this week among growers is the frost challenge. Phytech's Frost app has been a game-changer, helping growers avoid damages by getting per-block climate monitoring and alerts as well as wind machines’ real-time tracking. Growers can save labor, ensure execution and get run-time reports of their wind machines and under-tree sprinklers - all from their phones. They can define per-block or per-variety temperature thresholds for alerts. Plus - on the web they get all the data in one screen- frost, climate, soil, plant, fruit and hydraulics. Down below are some of the features, designed to help growers avoid frost damage

Ready to fight frost? Click here - https://bit.ly/3xTd0xK

✔️ Understand where is the lowest temperature on the farm
✔️ Detect temperature inversion in the farm (30ft high)
✔️ Monitor wind machines' and sprinklers' operation - whether they were activated as planned and how long they operated
✔️ Define temperature thresholds per block and get real-time alerts per block or per variety (phone call/sms)
✔️ Compare current frost conditions to the previous day to anticipate the trend

We're delighted to share that Phytech has been recognized as "Precision Irrigation Solution of the Year 2022" by the AgTech Breakthrough Awards.

We'd like to thank AgTechBreakthrough for the recognition. This couldn't have been done without our customers and partners around the world who share our vision and are leading digital transformation of our industry. 

Phytech is currently helping more than 850 of the world’s largest growers optimize their production by enabling them to monitor, plan and control their operations with an end-to-end Ag Operating System 

By being connected directly to their plants and irrigation infrastructure via a Plant-AI and IoT digital platform, farmers can optimize their irrigation, nutrition, and pest & disease management. Phytech offers subscription-based model with hassle-free installation, maintenance, and full agronomic support.

Phyetch in numbers:

•    Phytech currently monitors over 29 million trees

·       Over 100k IoT devices

•    In Washington: 8 out of 10 of the largest apple growers, accounting for 40% of the market, are powered by Phytech

•    In California: 40% of the almond market are customers powered by Phytech

•    In Israel: 90% of the avocado market are growers powered by Phytech 

Sustainability impact:

•    In California: Between 2019-2021 Phytech users used 25% less water each year compared to UC Davies recommendation

•    In Australia: Phytech’s almond customers managed to save 80 billion liters in 2019 thanks to irrigating differently between varieties and based on real-time water demand.

Phytech offers Unique monitoring and automation capabilities combined with plant-agronomic knowledge. An A-Z digital IoT platform consisting of a Network of sensors and apps to help growers manage irrigation, nutrition, and pest & disease with:

•    Tree/fruit-based irrigation management

•    Irrigation system monitoring

•    Automation - Close the loop from the crop to the drop

•    Per block granular climate monitoring Temperature and humidity

•    Farm management and planning tool (irrigation, nutrition, pest and disease)

·       Coming soon: Ag-inputs As a Service:

o   Fertilizer delivery (Nutrition management) 

o   Pheromones(Pest and Disease management)

About AgTechBreakthrough

Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the AgTechBreakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in agricultural and food technologies, services, companies and products. The AgTechBreakthrough Awards program provides a forum for public recognition around the achievements of AgTech companies and solutions in categories including farm management, indoor farming, automation, IoT and robotics, food quality, analytics and more. 

All award nominations are fully analyzed, evaluated and scored by AgTechBreakthrough's expert panel of judges, representing a mix of technical, business, academic and marketing expertise within the industry. The evaluation criteria for the AgTech Breakthrough Awards program are focused around the concept of innovation. 

For more information visit AgTechBreakthrough.com