Digital Agriculture Program Blends Research, Innovations and Disruptive IoT Technologies to Increase Food Production for a Growing, Global Population
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), and Purdue
University’s College of Agriculture announced that they have joined
forces to help develop and deliver a digital agriculture program that
will revolutionize farming and food production for a growing, global
population.
As the world’s population increases to an estimated nine billion people
by 2050, researchers assess that agricultural output must double to meet
the increasing demand. Purdue University’s world-renowned College of
Agriculture, home to three prestigious World
Food Prize winners, is using Aruba Wi-Fi and HPE Edgeline solutions
to launch a digital agriculture program that aims to grow and produce
food and fuel more effectively than ever before.
Based at Purdue’s 1,408-acre Agronomy Center for Research and Education
(ACRE) field research station, the digital agriculture project captures
terabytes of data daily by using multiple types of sensors, cameras and
human inputs. To gather, aggregate, process and transmit this data back
to Purdue’s HPE supercomputer, the university is leveraging a
combination of Aruba wireless solutions for mobile connectivity and HPE
Edgeline Converged Edge Systems for compute. The result is an
agriculture-centric IT infrastructure including advanced Internet of
Things (IoT) sensors and devices that will allow Purdue researchers to
study and improve plant growth and food production processes.
“Our digital agriculture project is the natural extension of a 5+ year
strategic relationship between Purdue University and HPE,” said Karen
Plaut, interim Dean of the College of Agriculture, Purdue
University. “As Purdue’s strategic digital agriculture partner, Aruba
and HPE provide not only critical infrastructure, but on-site IT support
and partnering in student research and internship programs. Together, we
can innovate and drive new efficiencies that have a significant impact
on global food production.”
Purdue’s digital agriculture program includes multiple research projects
delivering remote connectivity from ACRE’s researchers at field-based
lab sites who are using mobile devices to enter and send information via
the Aruba wireless network infrastructure, first to the HPE Edgeline
systems located at the edge and then to an HPC data center where the
information gathered is analyzed. Located in rural North-Central
Indiana, ACRE is home to the Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center,
a $15M automated field phenotyping center, featuring state-of-the-art
technologies for plant and seed processing, advanced sensing, and data
management. ACRE employs more than 100 students and researchers
conducting numerous research projects from basic to applied agriculture,
engineering, aviation, and computer science research.
An important benefit of the Aruba and HPE infrastructure is improved
productivity, leading to faster and better research results. The
infrastructure is enabling AgTech applications that replace many
previously manual processes to increase research speed and accuracy. For
example, in seed research, researchers using mobile devices in the field
can quickly transmit information about seed growth back to central labs
to quickly analyze the impact of water levels, fertilizer quantities,
and soil types covering the seeds. In turn, the labs can communicate
their analysis and feed this information back to the field to quickly
make adjustments.
Together, Purdue and HPE Aruba have jointly developed a number of new
AgTech innovations that are dramatically changing the speed at which
researchers can gather information and share their recommended practices
to improve farming and food production processes:
-
Solar-powered mobile Wi-Fi hotspots: Replacing the time-consuming
process of manually recording data in the field, researchers can now
enter data, on the spot, into a mobile device, and have it instantly
transferred to the appropriate analytics application in Purdue’s data
center.
-
Next-generation adaptive weather tower for farm-scale wireless
connectivity: A new weather tower provides high-speed connectivity
across the entire 1,408-acre ACRE facility to plant-attached sensors
that deliver accurate measurements on crop growth. Data provided by
in-field sensors is fed to an HPE supercomputer for comprehensive
analysis that has already resulted in new insights that were not
possible with the prior manual research processes.
-
PhenoRover sensor vehicle: The PhenoRover is a semi-automated mobile
vehicle that provides an IoT sensor platform to measure variations in
crop performance. The PhenoRover roams throughout ACRE research plots
capturing real-time data from plant-based sensors. This data is then
transmitted over the Wi-Fi network to researchers.
Moving forward, Purdue is looking to market many of its innovations,
such as the PhenoRover, for commercial use. Additional pilot projects
include an Unmanned Aerial Systems (also called drones) program, to
advance the effectiveness of plant-growth data collection. Currently,
drone images are downloaded, then distributed internally to study
biological relevance. In the future, the drone cameras could transmit
real-time images via the HPE Aruba infrastructure allowing growers to
make faster and better decisions for improved farming and food
production.
“With the right infrastructure in place, the possibilities for
innovation are really limitless,” said Plaut. “The work we’re doing,
with Aruba and HPE as our technology partners, is truly changing the
face of agriculture, with the end goal to find better, more
cost-effective ways to meet the demands for food production worldwide.”
Additional Resources
About Purdue University’s College of Agriculture
Purdue University’s College of Agriculture leads globally in the science
and business of agriculture, food, life, and natural resources,
positively changing the world through our unwavering commitment to
excellence in serving the land grant missions of learning, discovery,
and engagement.
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading provider of
next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes
worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower organizations
to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users who rely on
cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their work and personal
lives.
To learn more, visit Aruba at
http://www.arubanetworks.com
.
For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook,
and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products
visit Airheads Social at
http://community.arubanetworks.com
.
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Pavel Radda, +1-408-419-0294
pavel.radda@hpe.com
or
Lori Hultin, +1-818-879-4651
lori.hultin@hpe.com
or
Purdue
Erin Robinson, +1-765-496-1626
Purdue University, College of Agriculture
erobin@purdue.edu