Exploiting new technologies

Terres Inovia is leading this project bringing together several organizations specializing in agronomy, remote sensing and digital technology. The aim of this project is to construct a pilot real-time monitoring system for the entire growth cycle of rapeseed, based on the use of satellite sensors and connected objects.

Different types of users are envisaged: farmers, for the monitoring of plots on their farms, agricultural agricultural advisers, for spatial inventories of the crops grown in their areas of activity, and cooperatives, to provide a territorial view of production.

The RnDExperience® software suite is a tool for experimental data management used by Terres Inovia. Almost 85% of its experimental activities are processed with this software suite, corresponding to about 140 protocols and 550 trials performed internally or in partnership every year, and millions of items of data.

Since 2015, Terres Inovia has progressively invested in RnDExp Mobile, data input software designed for use in the field. Deployed by Doriane since 2016, this software makes it possible to synchronize data input in the field automatically with a central database, facilitating the integrated management of these data “from the field to technical reference”.

The institute is the chief overseeing body for a new mixed technological unit (UMT) that received French Ministry of Agriculture accreditation for five years in 2017. This project, christened UMT Magnum (modeling and digital agriculture), brings together Terres Inovia, AgroParisTech, INRA*, Arvalis - Institut du végétal and CentraleSupélec. Its aim is to increase our capacity to model cropping systems in the north of France.

Its work is organized around four axes:

- The improvement and use of models for tactical and strategic decision-making,

- The organization of training for actors from the agricultural world, technical institutes and students from AgroParisTech and CentraleSupélec,

- The design and implementation of digital tools in the framework of pilot operations,

- The use and valorization of models for more long-term needs.

The implementation of these axes will necessitate means of processing large amounts of data and the acquisition of new essential skills.

Terres Inovia has, for many years, been involved in the development of decision support systems (DSS) and calculators (e.g. the rapeseed nitrogen calculator) for refining cropping practices. One of the major issues at stake is the development of interoperability between these tools for our ecosystem. This work has already begun. Ultimately, our tools will be available online for use via diverse channels (e.g. website, smartphone application) and will be accessible to all our partners.

For the past few years, Terres Inovia has been using applications from ESRI, a company specializing in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and more specifically the ArcGIS Online portal combined with Survey123. It offers a simple and intuitive data collection solution centered on forms for the creation, sharing and analysis of surveys.  

More than 100 forms have thus been created since 2016 within Terres Inovia to collect information. Some are public and put online on the institute's website, in order to identify the presence and monitor the spread of pests (hernia, orobanches, bird damage) on the French territory.  Others are shared with Terres Inovia's partners to collect information within the framework of partnership projects, or only internally to record directly the observations made in the field.

The choice of this software solution allows to collect data, to value them in real time and to share them through dashboards that can be consulted online. More than 30 dashboards have already been created for internal or external use.