About

One of the greatest challenges in the coming decades will be the increase of agricultural production (to cover the increased needs for food) without a corresponding increase in water consumption, particularly in countries with limited water and soil resources. This can be achieved by optimizing the water supply expenditure in existing crops and the reuse of low-quality waters. There are various solutions to guide farmers about irrigation, but most of them require installation of equipment in the field and/or digital skills from farmers. Many farmers in order to play safe and to reduce the transports to the fields, over-irrigate and do not distribute water properly over time according to crop needs. In cases of limited water availability, the farmers apply less water quantity than deficit irrigation and also not at the right time according to the critical stages of crop.

Solution & Product

Zen IrriWare provides a solution for optimized use of irrigation water, an important external input for many crops. The irrigation requirements are calculated as the difference between crop evapotranspiration and the effective rainfall as measured in real time from any type of local meteorological stations. It also utilizes weather forecast to cancel irrigation when significant rain is coming, reduce crop risks (plant damage, e.g. in cases of heat waves) and improve yield (quantity and quality). In cases of limited water availability (dry years), requirements are calculated only for the critical growth stages (application of deficit irrigation). The software uses simple ways (SMS or e-mail) to communicate irrigation advices to the farmers in cases of manual irrigation. It could use API for Interaction with Irrigation controllers or valves. So, using precision irrigation we have an optimization in irrigation application compared to the empirical irrigation carried out by the farmers.

Innovation & Scalability

The system’s architecture includes the ability to process real time weather data from any commercial brand of meteorological station, which has the required sensors, for Evapotranspiration calculation and even combine data from different sources for calculations’ reliability maximization. It uses weather forecasts from Wunderground and it can interact with various irrigation controllers in real time with use of their API. In Greece there are about 800 meteorological station with open data and the ZEN AGRO PC has 12 of those. Each station can provide data for many farmers in near area. In Greece according farmers crop declaration in 2018, there are about 1.800.000 irrigated farms. The above make the software fully functional for all over Greece and any farmer is a potential user. Proper data availability will make the proposed application also suitable for other countries, thus permitting greater geographical deployment and customer base expansion for our system.

Traction & achievements

Our moto is: irrigate like the pros at a cost similar to that of an amateur irrigation programmer. The software can be used both by individual farmers and groups of farmers. Priority is farmer groups (our software is already used by six groups of farmers in more than 3500 farms). The target group is not only young people who are users of ICT and thus they will exploit easier all the specifications offered by this software, but also, farmers without digital skills who can easily use the software advices by the SMS function. The company communicate the software functions by participating in exhibitions (already in AGROTICA 2020), with advertisements on Social Media, with offer for a free testing period, with communication by phone or e-mail with farmers advisors, etc. The software interface will be bilingual and the Company web page has already an English version. Since the software uses methods proposed by FAO and international literature as well as data from different brands of commercial sensors and platforms it supports all kinds of crops and can be used globally. The software is already tested with data from meteorological stations outside of Greece. Members or collaborators of the company have great experience as irrigation advisors in foreign countries (China, Pakistan, Egypt..). We will try to extend the coverage step by step in more countries by spending a part of the turnover for advertising there.

Team & Why Us

Dr. Androniki Papafilippaki, PhD in Soil Science, MSc in Quality Control and Environment. Farmers\' advisor, expert in utilization of soil amendments for improvement of soil fertility and water holding capacity. Georgoulakis Efstratios, Analyst Programmer M.Eng. in Computer Information Sciences and Business Management. Since 2005 he has participated in many R&D EU projects as a developer, coordinator and project manager. Dr Kostas Chartzoulakis, Irrigation Consultant (unpaid), Senior researcher, MSc in Agronomy (AUA), PhD in Eco-physiology. More than 30 years expertise in the field of water requirements of the crops, irrigation systems (design and application) and sustainable water resources management in agriculture. Giannis Kasapakis, Irrigation Consultant (unpaid), Agricultural Engineer. MSc in Quality Control and Environment. About 10 years of expertise in the field of crop water requirements irrigation systems and sustainable water resources management in agriculture.

Funding Needs

The company immediate milestone is to obtain funding to certify the software.
Also by the utilization of knowhow on collection and analysis on environmental data the next milestone is to provide automatic pest prediction warnings for crop care advices for olives in Greece.