Crop yield estimation
software could save
agriculture millions
By Jack Baldwin
Article originally published via
The Lead and with permission.
E
stimating grape yields is
a headache for the wine
industry – but now there’s
an app for that.
Seer Insights is a startup created
by three students as part of the
University of Adelaide’s Tech
eChallenge. On top of juggling
lectures, study and coursework,
the 20 year olds are building a
business around an evolving suite
of software called GrapeBrain.
“We’re interested in agriculture. The
team is passionate about the way
food is produced particularly,” says
team member Liam Ellul, who has
a background in commerce and law.
“I think food production is going
to be an issue coming up in our
lifetimes and we’ll get a lot of
benefit and enjoyment being involved
with a business that helps lower
food prices by creating efficiency
and production,” he says.
GrapeBrain started out as something
very different. In the early stages of
development the team was looking
at general crop monitoring for
agriculture using drones.
“We saw there was a lot of buzz
around drones. Our first idea was
strapping a torn apart smart phone
on to a UAV glider, just to take it out
and show we were keen. From there
58
we realised it didn’t have to be
drone hardware. It could be satellite
hardware, even software,”
Ellul explains.
Seer also consists of Petros
Bakopoulos, specialising in finance,
and Harry Lucas, the technical lead
on the project who is responsible for
the code that GrapeBrain runs on.
It became apparent that they had
to concentrate and being based near
the Barossa in South Australia, one
Liam Ellul, Harry
Lucas and Petros
Bakopoulos from
Seer Insights.
of the world’s great wine regions,
it was logical to pick vineyards for
their system.
“The winemakers basically said, look,
you can throw as many drones as you
want out there, but what we’ll pay you
to do is estimate yield,” Lucas says.
GrapeBrain is a complex suite of
software that takes a number of
metrics and spits out a yield result
based on those inputs.
“Without giving away the golden
goose, the approach that we’ve
developed has come about reading
research papers and also talking to
the practical realities of industry,”
says Ellul, who during gaps in his
study drives into the Barossa wine
region to quiz grape growers about
their wants and needs.
“Our software, we’d take it in, get
feedback, take it back and work on
it,” he says. “It turned out it wasn’t
just a problem that could be solved