Crop Health (Diseases and Pests detection) - gap analysis

P18: Crop health (diseases and pests detection)

Download the gap analysis product sheet 

Maturity score

Mean: 2.6

STD: 0.49

Constraints and limitations

·  Cloud presence

·  Challenges in fields with mixed land cover (multiple crops, bare soil, vegetation)

·  Depending on the crop/plant/disease, the accuracy can be very low, but sufficient for some use cases

Relevant user needs

UN30: Need for monitoring with accurate measurements of the growth and health of trees.

UN37: Projection of risk to portfolio assets into the future.

UN55: Detecting crop damage at the level of individual farms/fields.

R&D gaps

·  Lacking the ability to differentiate specific disease types due to limited spectral discrimination.

·  Temporal coverage of the data from existing sensors at a high enough spatial resolution.

·  Similar spectral characteristics between pest damage and other vegetation stress factors require additional in-situ data.

·  Limitations in predictive analytics

·  When it comes to vegetation diseases, the biggest limitation in setting up an EO service is the lack of field data to validate it.

·  Lack of matureness of EO needs from stakeholders. Not clear to them what can be demanded or expected.

·  Inertia in using traditionally established analysis products, which mostly require human supervision. Greater credibility to human reports than to automatic remote monitoring.

Potential improvements drivers

·  Increased efforts in downscaling current sensor data to provide the necessary temporal coverage.

·  Additional in-situ data to calculate/validate the product in each region where it is needed.

·  Capacity building: workshops, meetings, more information about what EO can provide.

·  Improvements in models for predictive analytics.

·  Hyperspectral sensors to differentiate between different types of diseases.

Utilisation level review

Utilisation score

Mean: 2.20

STD: 0.75

No utilisation

Low utilisation

·  Unawareness of the existence of commercial EO products with better specifications

·  Lack of knowledge of executives and low-risk tolerance.

Medium utilisation

·  Unawareness of the existence of the best available commercial EO product with better specifications

High utilisation

Critical gaps related to relevant user needs

Guideline gap

UN30: Need for monitoring with accurate measurement of the growth and health of trees.

UN37: Projection of risk to portfolio assets into the future.

Utilisation gap

UN55: Detecting crop damage at the level of individual farms/fields