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Acquaculture, Agrotech, Start ups

This Award gives a platform to Agri Startups to showcase their exemplary projects implemented on a range of issues impacting Indian Agriculture and allied sectors.

The pioneer in tech infused Aqua farming, Aquaconnect, wins the 1st runner up ’Best Agri Startup in Application of Digital Technologies (Mature Stage) Award’ in the 3rd edition of Virtual FICCI Summit & Awards for Agri Start-Ups held on February 9-10, 2021. This Award gives a platform to Agri Startups to showcase their exemplary projects implemented on a range of issues impacting Indian Agriculture and allied sectors. The award was presented by  B.C. Patil, Hon. Agriculture Minister, Government of Karnataka. 

BC Patil, Agriculture Minister, Govt of Karnataka said that agri start-ups can provide missing links in the agricultural value chain and deliver efficient, innovative products, technologies and services to farmers and consumers.

On the award achievement Rajamanohar Somasundaram, CEO and Founder of Aquaconnect said, “I thank FICCI for recognising Aquaconnect as a winner of FICCI Agri Startup Awards. It is a great validation and encouragement for us to continue our efforts to improve the efficiencies of Indian fisheries and aquaculture value chains through technology intervention.” 

 TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd emphasized that every agri start-up has its own strength and there is a need to create a dedicated cell for agri start-ups.

Aquaconnect is a full-stack aquaculture technology venture that works with 13,000+ shrimp and fish aquaculture farmers in various states of India to improve their farm productivity and market linkage through AI and satellite remote sensing technology.

This Award gives a platform to Agri

Agrotech

UPL will contribute its global capabilities and extensive range of crop protection products and biosolutions.

UPL and Novozymes, the world leader in biological solutions, announce a partnership to provide a range of biological products to the Argentinian market. Biological products made by Novozymes and marketed under the Nitragin brand will now become part of UPL’s portfolio, providing a complete range of biosolutions and crop protection products.

The relationship between both companies started two years ago with the inclusion of UPL’s Dimension brand fungicide seed treatment in a Nitragin branded line of inoculant products. The positive acceptance of these products in the market has led to the decision to extend the relationship and formalize a partnership under which the Nitragin inoculant portfolio will form part of the range of solutions marketed by UPL.

UPL will contribute its global capabilities and extensive range of crop protection products and biosolutions, while Novozymes will leverage its 122 years of experience in the inoculant business, enabling the partnership to develop and market a complete set of solutions for an increasingly integrated and sustainable approach to agriculture.

UPL will contribute its global capabilities and

Agro Universities, R&D, Singapore

The analytical tools are able to provide tissue-cell or organelle-specific information on living plants in real-time and can be used on any plant species.

Researchers from the Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) of Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), have highlighted the potential of recently developed analytical tools that are rapid and non-destructive, with a proof of concept through first-generation examples. The analytical tools are able to provide tissue-cell or organelle-specific information on living plants in real-time and can be used on any plant species. 

In a perspective paper titled “Species-independent analytical tools for next-generation agriculture” published in the scientific journal Nature Plants, SMART DiSTAP researchers review the development of two next-generation tools, engineered plant nanosensors and portable Raman spectroscopy, to detect biotic and abiotic stress, monitor plant hormonal signalling, and characterise soil, phytobiome and crop health in a non- or minimally invasive manner. The researchers discussed how the tools bridge the gap between model plants in the laboratory and field application for agriculturally relevant plants. An assessment of the future outlook, economic potential, and implementation strategies for the integration of these technologies in future farming practices was also provided in the paper. 

Plant nanosensors, developed at SMART DiSTAP, are small nanosensors – smaller than the width of a hair – that can be inserted into the tissues and cells of plants to understand complex signalling pathways. The portable Raman spectroscopy, also developed at SMART DiSTAP, is a portable laser-based device that measures molecular vibrations induced by laser excitation, providing highly specific Raman spectral signatures that provide a fingerprint of a plant’s health. These tools are able to monitor stress signals in short time-scales, ranging from seconds to minutes, which allow for early detection of stress signals in real-time.

Dr Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew, the paper’s first author said, “Plants are highly complex machines within a dynamic ecosystem, and a fundamental study of its internal workings and diverse microbial communities of its ecosystem is important to uncover meaningful information that will be helpful to farmers and enable sustainable farming practices. These next-generation tools can help answer a key challenge in plant biology, which is to bridge the knowledge gap between our understanding of model laboratory-grown plants and agriculturally-relevant crops cultivated in fields or production facilities.” 

 Paper’s co-corresponding author, DiSTAP co-lead Principal Investigator, and Deputy Chairman of TLL Professor Chua Nam Hai explained. “Plant nanosensors and Raman spectroscopy would allow farmers to adjust fertiliser and water usage, based on internal responses within the plant, to optimise growth, driving cost efficiencies in resource utilisation. Optimal harvesting conditions may also translate into higher revenue from increased product quality that customers are willing to pay a premium for.”

DiSTAP Scientific Advisory Board Members, Professor Kazuki Saito, Group Director of Metabolomics Research Group at RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor, Oded Shoseyov also co-authored the paper.

 

 

The analytical tools are able to provide

Dairy, IT

mooPay system enables an automated digital payment solution that helps the dairy officials to transfer the milk payments digitally to member farmers.

 As part of its value added embedded fintech services program for dairies and dairy farmers, the leading dairy-tech startup and World Economic Forum’s technology pioneer ‘Stellapps’ has launched a first of its kind fully automated Digital Direct Farmers Payment product for Private Dairy Sector, called “mooPay” in VRS Foods Ltd , Malanpur district of Madhya Pradesh on 14 January 20201 in the presence of the Honourable Director – Operation,  Narender Nagarji , under whose visionary leadership this project has been executed. VRS is one of the leading dairies in India and markets dairy products under the brand of Paras. 

Stellapps’ Direct Farmer Payment fintech solution mooPay acts as a payment gateway for dairies to make payments on the click of a single button to every registered farmer in a matter of seconds, completely removing the risks and costs of transferring money to lakh of farmers in hundreds of villages. The mooPay FinTech solution will bring transparency and cost savings due to digitization of the milk value chain and enable financial inclusion of farmers.

 It is a big step towards realizing the Stellapps vision of converting milk into a ‘real time’ currency for smallholder farmers, to help them through stressful situations. The initiative will initially cover 900 villages in 3 states and will directly benefit 20000 farmers and later initiative will cover 5000 villages benefiting 100000 farmers.

Stellapps mooPay system enables an automated digital payment solution that helps the dairy officials to transfer the milk payments digitally to member farmers from the dairies existing bank account to that of the farmers saving bank account. mooPay systems will automatically fetch milk payment data from the IoT devices deployed at every village-level milk collection centers which capture the milk pouring of every farmer.

In the milk value chain, transactions predominantly have been in cash and there are no formal records of individual farmers’ income. By capturing the cash flows from the dairy to farmer accounts, mooPay enables better creditworthiness assessment and facilitates lending to farmers. Stellapps’ alternative credit score, mooScore, gives reliable creditworthiness of dairy farmers based on their milk pouring.

Rahul Mallick, CEO – FinTech and Value Added Services, Stellapps said, “Financial Inclusion of farmers will be crucial to boosting farmer income. Enabling direct digital payments to farmer bank accounts not only helps improve financial inclusion and economic empowerment of farmers but also facilitates the design and delivery of innovative data-based farmer beneficiary programmes.”

 Narendra Nagar, CMD, VRS Foods said, “Paras for years has been trying to achieve a direct relationship with Farmers. We have invested a lot of capital in making the procurement process transparent and help Dairy farmers to increase their income. This new effort will give us new energy to give farmers and our esteemed customers, a better service. I hope we can make full use of the IoT technology from Stellapps and work in co-operation. This new step will also make us contribute in The Government effort to help farmer increase his income because the technology provides a window to record farmer income and his activities.”

mooPay system enables an automated digital payment

Live Stock, R&D

Innovative technology helps farmers to reduce environmental footprint of livestock production through reduced emissions and natural resource usage  

Syngenta Seeds, in partnership with the University of Arkansas Resiliency Centre (UARC), unveiled newly published research highlighting the potential for beef producers to reduce their environmental footprint by using Enogen® corn for feed from Syngenta Seeds. Agriculture alone is responsible for 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the whole food value chain accounts for 25 per cent of emissions.

Enogen corn for feed, fed to cattle as grain or silage, helps convert starch to sugar more efficiently, resulting in more readily available energy for livestock. The purpose of the UARC study was to evaluate the performance of Enogen corn for feed – compared to conventional feed corn – when used as an ingredient in their operations. The life cycle assessment was conducted by Drs Greg Thoma, Marty Matlock and Martin Christy at the UARC.

 “To your average person, small percentages like 5 percent might not seem significant when feeding cattle. But improving sustainability indicators across a complex system like beef production with tens of millions of cattle starts with understanding where the impacts occur in the life cycle of the product. Technological innovations like Enogen corn from Syngenta Seeds have the potential to enhance the sustainability of agricultural production, especially reducing greenhouse gas emissions”, said Marty Matlock, Ph.D., Executive Director of UARC. 

The UARC findings indicate that an improvement in feed efficiency – as demonstrated in University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) feeding trials2 – results in approximately 6 per cent improvement in the four key environmental performance metrics of beef production. The observed environmental performance improvement during the backgrounding phase – as seen in Kansas State University (KSU) trials2 – was in the 3.5-5 per cent range, which suggests Enogen corn for feed is an important potential technology for mitigation of environmental impact in this phase of beef production, as well. 

“We’re thrilled with this new data from the UARC study that supports earlier research showing clear environmental benefits when using Enogen corn for feed,” said Chris Cook, Head, Enogen at Syngenta Seeds.

Innovative technology helps farmers to reduce environmental

R&D, Start ups

AgNext has innovated technologies for agribusinesses & built an AI based platform ’Qualix’ for rapid commodity assessment across procurement, trade, production and storage 

The fast-growing AgTech Company, AgNext, has won the ’Most Innovative Agri Startup Award’ in the 3rd edition of Virtual FICCI Summit & Awards for Agri Start-Ups held on 9-10 February 2021. This Award gives a platform to Agri Startups to showcase their exemplary projects implemented on a range of issues impacting Indian Agriculture and allied sectors. The award was presented by  B.C. Patil, Agriculture Minister, Government of Karnataka. 

BC Patil, Agriculture Minister, Government of Karnataka said that agri start-ups can provide missing links in the agricultural value chain and deliver efficient, innovative products, technologies and services to farmers and consumers. 

On the award achievement, Taranjeet Singh Bhamra said, “I’m delighted to receive this award. FICCI has shown great confidence in our vision and It truly inspires us to use first principles and data science along with deep learning to continue innovating for agriculture and solving the food problem for the world.”

Mr TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd emphasized that every agri start-up has its own strength and there is a need to create a dedicated cell for agri start-ups.

AgNext has innovated technologies for agribusinesses and built an AI-based platform ’Qualix’ for rapid commodity assessment across procurement, trade, production, storage, and consumption of food & agri value chains. Digitizing food quality brings trust, speed & transparency to the transactions across the value chain. Bringing fair prices to farmers and greater incentive to improve their farm practices for quality crops; more profitability & reduced cost for businesses and eventually quality food for end consumers.

AgNext has innovated technologies for agribusinesses &

Dairy, E-commerce, Live Stock, Poultry

It helps in improving maintenance, reproduction, growth and immunity for swine, cattle, broilers and horses. 

 Kemin Industries, a global ingredient manufacturer, has recently launched KemTRACE® Chromium-OR – an organic-compliant chromium propionate feed ingredient for use in swine, cattle, broiler and horse diets.

KemTRACE Chromium-OR is a highly bioavailable, organic-compliant source of chromium propionate that helps improve glucose utilization and reduce the negative impacts of stress for increased cellular energy and function. This results in improved maintenance, reproduction, growth and immunity for swine, cattle, broilers and horses.

The Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) is an international non-profit organization that provides an independent review of product inputs – including livestock feed ingredients – intended for use in organic production and processing. OMRI is recognized by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) as a reputable third-party.

KemTRACE Chromium-OR has been reviewed by OMRI against the USDA NOP standards. After evaluation, OMRI determined that KemTRACE Chromium-OR is permitted for use as a mineral livestock feed ingredient in organic production and processing and is now considered OMRI Listed. 

“We are thrilled to add KemTRACE Chromium-OR to our trace mineral portfolio,” said Kristi Krafka, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance, Kemin Animal Nutrition and Health – North America. “Livestock and broiler production is continually evolving, and at Kemin, we aim to advance our product offerings alongside it. KemTRACE Chromium-OR is backed by all the research, safety and efficacy we’ve built up for decades with our flagship chromium propionate product, KemTRACE® Chromium. This organic-compliant formulation puts a new tool in the toolbox for organic producers looking to improve the health and performance of their animals.” 

KemTRACE Chromium-OR is manufactured at Kemin in Des Moines, Iowa, USA and is sourced from U.S.-based raw materials. Kemin’s Des Moines manufacturing facility has the Food Safety System Certification (FSSC) 22000, which is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) as a rigorous food safety management system, certified by approved third-party organizations.

It helps in improving maintenance, reproduction, growth

Agro chems – Fertilizers, AgroPolicy

The grant will restore the urea production capacity of 3.90 Lac MT per annum.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently accorded approval to the proposal of the Department of Fertilizers for Grant-in-aid of Rs 100 crore to Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizers Corporation Limited (BVFCL), Namrup (Assam) to sustain operations of its urea manufacturing units.

BVFCL, Namrup is a Public Sector Undertaking formed as per the Companies Act, under the administrative control of the Department of Fertilizers (DoF), Government of India. Despite being the first gas-based urea manufacturing unit in India and having all the infrastructure and feedstock availability, it has been difficult to maintain a reasonable production level from the existing units in a cost-effective manner because of their old & obsolete technology.

In order to ensure the safe, sustainable, and economic operation of the plants, certain equipment and machineries need to be replaced/overhauled. The minimum functional repair to be undertaken for smoother operation of the plants with the procurement of mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, and catalyst items etc. shall attract an estimated expenditure of Rs100 crores and therefore, Gol approved Grant in Aid of Rs 100 crores to BVFCL.

BVFCL is situated at the North-Eastern part of India, which plays an important role of economic growth in the region. The grant in aid of Rs 100 crore to BVFCL will restore the urea production capacity of 3.90 Lac MT per annum and ensure timely availability of Urea to Tea Industry & Farming Sector in the entire North-Eastern region especially Assam.

 

The grant will restore the urea production

R&D

Red mason bees are important for both ecological and economic reasons.

A higher diversity of flowering plants increases the breeding success of wild bees and may help compensate for the negative effects of insecticides. This is what researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Hohenheim, as well as the Julius Kühn Institute, have found in a large-scale experimental study. The results have been published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

In their experiment, the researchers investigated how successfully the wild bee Osmia bicornis (red mason bee) reproduced. Red mason bees are important for both ecological and economic reasons. The wild bees were experimentally kept in more than 50 large enclosure cages with flower mixtures of varying wild plant diversity and insecticide-treated oilseed rape. Subsequently, the reproductive success of the wild bees, as measured by the number of their brood cells and emerged offspring, was investigated over several months.

The research team found that the number of cells that the wild bees created for their offspring where species-rich flowering mixtures were available was twice that of wild bees where only oilseed rape was available. The reproductive success of the wild bees, which have to supply their offspring with pollen and nectar, increased both in cages with a large diversity of flowering plants and where there were particularly important plant species. In contrast, if oilseed rape treated with clothianidin, was available to the bees, this had a negative effect on their reproductive success.

The study shows that both the diversity of flowering plants and exposure to insecticides significantly influence the reproductive success of wild bees, and shows that a high diversity of flowering plants could compensate for the negative effects of insecticides.

 

Red mason bees are important for both

Agrotech

This collaboration allows farmers to choose the best combination of hardware and software wherever they farm.

Davis Instruments and Pessl Instruments, two leading global manufacturers of weather stations, data collection hardware, and software for agriculture have partnered to integrate data from Davis Instruments EnviroMonitor platform with Pessl Instruments FieldClimate software, creating the most holistic suite of agriculture sensors and software on the market. 

“We are excited to offer Pessl FieldClimate software to farmers around the world who trust Davis’ VantagePro2 weather stations and EnviroMonitor farm data platform to collect critical weather and other sensor data from their farms. This collaboration allows our customers to choose the best combination of hardware and software wherever they farm,” said Chris Sullivan, President of Davis Instruments. 

Davis Instruments EnviroMonitor platform is built on their history of designing and manufacturing high-quality, durable, scientific-grade sensor data collection systems, giving farmers cost-effective access to the power of data-driven decisions. Combining that heritage with FieldClimate’s software platform designed for collecting, analyzing, and displaying agronomic, meteorological, soil, and pest data creates a broad range of solutions. The integration with EnviroMonitor gives Davis customers access to the FieldClimate platform and Pessl’s enhanced decision support tools. 

 

This collaboration allows farmers to choose the

Agrotech, Start ups

It is imperative to democratize technology and create jobs in rural India through development of Agri start up ecosystem 

 Dr Ashok Dalwai, CEO, NRAA, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt of India  said that while India has made good progress in ease of doing business, more efforts are still required to make agriculture competitive.

Addressing the inaugural session of the third edition of FICCI Summit and Awards for Agri Start-ups, Dr Dalwai said that agricultural start-ups should become the pivot of agricultural transformation. He also mentioned that it is imperative to democratize technology and create jobs in rural India through development of Agri start up ecosystem. “We need to create a single platform of agricultural institutions and compile their technology to make it available to the Agri start-ups. There are numerous incubation centres in the country that run entrepreneurship development programmes. This needs to be made available through a single window system,” he said. Also, all government departments and stakeholders need to come together and set up a one -stop- solution for data collection, he added.

Speaking on the importance of the sector, Dr Dalwai said, “Agriculture should not be seen as just a food producing sector but as a major contributor to building the nation’s economy. While every nation will compete to becoming a global hub for certain commodities, India need to reorient and redesign agriculture to generate more productive employment and gain rightful position in global market.” He also highlighted the importance of collaborative partnership between Start-ups, FPOs and MSMEs to drive holistic growth in the sector.

Further, Dr Dalwai said that it is important to promote capacity building and enhance skills. “Secondary agriculture should be brought forward as a main activity for agricultural start-ups to explore” he added.

Neelkamal Darbari, MD, SFAC, Govt of India, mentioned that wider use and dissemination of customised technologies across the agriculture value chain from pre-harvest to post harvest is the need of the hour.

TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd said, “While the agri start-ups bring in brilliant ideas and get into a mode of action on the ground, one of the areas that they get stuck in is ‘how to expand?’ and we need to address this issue”.

It is imperative to democratize technology and

Agro Universities, R&D

The device is aimed to increase field capacity and uniformity in liquid spraying. 

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed an energy-efficient pest controlling device for smaller agricultural tracts owned by marginal farmers. The research team has developed a self-propelled boom-type sprayer that can be operated using solar energy while safely guided through the crops in smaller tracts of land. The device is aimed to increase field capacity and uniformity in liquid spraying and also to reduce drudgery to the operator and dependency on fossil fuel for carrying out spraying in cropped areas.

The semi-automated device, developed by Prof Hifjur Raheman, Anup Behera Rahul K and Prof. P.B.S. Bhadoria from the Dept. of Agricultural and Food Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, will address several challenges of a mechanized pest control system in the small farm sector. The system comprises a propelling unit fitted with a liquid storage tank, a DC motor operated pump to pressurize the liquid to be sprayed. Multiple numbers of spray nozzles are mounted on a boom fitted to the front of the machine to cover wider width at a time.

 A set of solar-powered battery act as the power source of the DC motor to propel the spraying unit as well as for running the pump. Unlike a knapsack sprayer, the liquid storage tank is of bigger capacity and it is carried on a solar-powered three-wheeler trolley. An operator is required to control the movement of the spraying unit. A simple arrangement has been provided to vary the height of spraying (i.e., nozzle height from the ground) to carryout spraying for different heights of crops. Solar panels are mounted on top of the machine to provide continuous power supply during operation through the Maximum Power Point Tracker controller and it also provides shade to the operator during spraying in the field.

“As compared to conventional knapsack sprayers, the developed sprayer has a higher field capacity and more uniformity of spraying with less drudgery to the operator. It can be easily operated in the field using solar energy with a maximum speed of 2 km/h and can cover a width of 1.5 metres at a time with a field efficiency of 81% thus saving time, human involvement and chemicals,” remarked Prof. Raheman. The researchers have filed a patent for the product and the product is ready for commercialization.

The device is aimed to increase field

R&D

The R&D efforts undertaken by ICAR are farmer-centric and path breaking.

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is engaged in developing high-yielding, disease/pest-resistant varieties and technologies in crops, horticulture, animal and fisheries science which have enabled food and nutritional security in the country. During the last three years, a total 838 high-yielding and trait-specific field crop varieties have been developed by ICAR of which 578 are climate-resilient, 41 short duration and 47 biofortified varieties. During the last three years, 3.53 lakh breeder seed of 1330 varieties of 61 field crops has been produced as per the indents received from DAC & FW and supplied to the seed-producing agencies. 

Integrated Farming System (IFS) models (63 till date) developed by ICAR have the potential to enhance the income of farmers. During the last 3 years 18 IFS models, 14 bankable projects on IFS and organic farming packages for 22 cropping systems were developed.  Total 101 technologies for processing and on-farm value addition were also developed. In fisheries, ICAR developed breeding and seed production technologies of 9 food fishes and 12 ornamental fishes, demonstrated cage culture in reservoirs and open sea, developed several cost-effective feeds for fish and shellfish, developed and demonstrated culture technology of pacific white shrimp, farming in inland saline regions of north India and developed and commercialized several nutraceuticals from seaweeds and other aquatic organisms for human health.

The R&D efforts undertaken by ICAR are farmer-centric. With the purpose of providing technical support to the farmers and providing technology backstopping of various farmer-centric schemes of the Government ICAR sets targets. During 2020 alone, 345 varieties of different crops were developed. 

The R&D efforts undertaken by ICAR are

Acquaculture, Finance, Live Stock, Start ups

Company will invest in scaling up its supply chain and technology infrastructure to support innovation and accessibility of its products and services

Chennai based Omnichannel meat and seafood brand TenderCuts has announced that it has raised Rs 110 crore (USD 15 million) in a funding round led by Paragon Partners.

The funding round also saw participation from NABVENTURES, a leading agri-food tech VC fund backed by NABARD. The funding will allow TenderCuts to expand its current operations and pursue organic and inorganic growth opportunities, the company said in a release.

The funds will also allow the company to invest in scaling up its supply chain and technology infrastructure to support innovation and accessibility of its products and services, it said.

TenderCuts provides freshly cut meat and seafood to customers through its neighborhood stores which cater not only to walk-in customers, but also online shoppers, driven by a fully integrated supply chain fuelled by proprietary technology.

While commenting on funding, Nishanth Chandran CEO and founder TenderCuts said, “This investment will pave the way for us to enter new markets and further establish our omnichannel network. We are delighted to partner with Paragon Partners and NABVENTURES and look forward to tapping into their significant experience in growing consumer businesses in the retail, agri, food & beverage, and e-commerce sectors”.

 

Company will invest in scaling up its