Canada’s Agronomix Software and Purdue University-affiliated startup Progeny Drone announce a strategic alliance focused on data integration for their mutual clients.
Drones have long been hyped as a revolutionary tool to enhance agronomic research and supplant laborious manual data collection tasks in small plot field trials. However, the capability to extract actionable data lagged far behind developments in UAS hardware.
“In many cases disillusioned early adopters now have drones gathering dust, only used to capture bird’s eye views for cover photos on reports,” says Edwin Reidel, Progeny Drone business development director.
In order to use UAS-derived data most effectively, it must be integrated seamlessly into existing databases. Although outputs from Plot Phenix by Progeny drone are compatible with any software, the alliance with Agronomix seeks to add enhanced value for mutual clients of the two companies, they say.
“We are frequently asked about drones and how to process the images” says Agronomix President Christopher Leonard. “Working with Progeny is a logical step to offer our clients even greater value than they get with Genovix already. Both companies have unique offerings to plant breeders and agronomists. Strategically coming together can only be positive for our clients.”
In the coming months, Agronomix will announce enhancements to its Genovix platform to import Plot Phenix outputs seamlessly, including original images, proprietary Plot Clips, and all metrics including stand counts, canopy cover, row length under vegetation, and RGB/multispectral canopy analyses.
In addition, Agronomix will make the UAS outputs fully compatible with its relational database of genotypic, phenotypic, and agronomic data. Linking the data enables researchers to graph and visualize data from numerous perspectives. For example, stand counts from Plot Phenix can be related to soil type for powerful spatial analyses. Furthermore, the Plot Phenix outputs can be analyzed alongside all traits in Genovix using the embedded R statistical tools.
