The University of Lincoln will be represented by Mr David May, Senior Project Manager from the Lincoln Institute of Agri Food Technology (LIAT). LIAT is embedded in the University’s College of Science and engages academic staff in a wide range of technology focused research and development projects in conjunction with the industry.

Key projects include the development of state of the art tracking and tracing techniques to monitor food borne pathogens (Campylobacter), the use of big data to control massive networks of machines (refrigeration systems), the development of novel sensors to monitor soil moisture and the application of robotics in agri food production, which includes processing, harvesting and weed control.

At REAP LIAT will be supported by Saga Robotics who will demonstrate Thorvald, a revolutionary platform with the capability to carry a wide range of sensors in an agricultural environment and also be deployed as an autonomous carrying system.

The University of Hertfordshire has recently launched the Hertfordshire Science Partnership which leverages the state-of-the-art facilities and academic expertise at the University to boost the dynamic agri-technology and life sciences sector in the UK. The scheme is funded by the Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership and the European Regional Development Fund.

Organisations can benefit from subsidised rates when accessing our expertise:

– Hertfordshire Knowledge Exchange Partnerships (HKEPs) enable companies to benefit from tailored PhD level projects with input from academics throughout the 4-year programme
– Rent our facilities, or commission our dedicated scientists to carry out research on your behalf

We will exhibit research projects in areas including crop protection against pathogens, plant physiology and genomics, through interactive and visual forms such as video streaming, posters, and live demonstrations of plants with disease traits. We will also display outcomes from our applied degrees in agriculture subjects, including post graduate degrees in BSc Applied Plant and Animal Biology and MSc Environmental Management with Agriculture.

Our stand will showcase Robot-Fish – a robot which looks like a fish, can swim like a fish and is autonomous. It is fitted with various sensors that help Robot-Fish to move and also allow it to collect data. There will be videos of Robot-Fish ‘in action’ running in the background and the model will be available for delegates to see.

We will also be focusing on manipulating plant processes (photosynthesis, WUE, sensors, ability to with stand abiotic stress) to improve plant growth and crop yield and state-of-the art techniques for monitoring plant performance. This will include molecular biosensors and novel phenotyping approaches developed in-house at Essex, many of which are finding applications in industry.

Hands-on activities will include thermography for monitoring stomatal performance as well as hand-held instrumentation for monitoring photosynthetic efficiency and plant stress.

Soil Moisture Sense Ltd specialises in remote soil moisture and climate monitoring. Our experienced team work with growers to provide bespoke monitoring solutions for all types of production system. We offer a full service from installation to online data display with decision support.

We believe that data needs to be presented in a simple, easy to access format which is easy to interpret, so informed decisions can be made on the move.

We have been using Sentek soil moisture probes for over 20 years and these remain the core of our moisture monitoring systems.

Over the past two years we have developed our own irrigation automation system, which builds upon our existing tried and tested monitoring equipment.

The Smith Institute is an independent company that specialises in solving complex challenges for businesses and governments by applying mathematical techniques.

We work at the forefront of innovation in high value sectors including telecommunications, transport, defence, retail, energy, manufacturing and agri-business. We help clients develop new capabilities, design, manage and deliver innovation programs, from background research and definition of problem statement to bespoke methodology and models, proof of concept and implementation.

Our services can enable organisations in the agri-tech sector to respond more dynamically to market opportunities. For example, the Smith Institute has experience in translating your knowledge and data into models, algorithms or toolboxes for advanced visualisation, decision-making and operational optimisation. We have substantial experience in data science applications gained from numerous collaborations, organising data science workshops and delivering projects which have large data components.

At REAP we will exhibit a demo of a tool recently developed that turns historical observations and current weather forecasts into predictions on crop readiness. It allows the user to explore multiple scenarios before and during a growing season and perform “what if” analysis.

Small Robot Company aims to offer robots to farmers through a Farming as a Service (FaaS) model comprising hardware and a software service. Farmers would pay a per hectare subscription fee for a robotic hardware service which digitises the farm, and delivers crop care at per-plant precision.

The robots take care of all the feeding, seeding, and weeding. When one of these robots is needed, it turns up and does its job. When it is finished, it is taken away. This makes it very low risk for farmers to trial and adopt. It also means that farmers no longer have to worry about buying, storing or maintenance of most crop care machinery and equipment.

Find out more at smallrobotcompany.com

Rural Business Research combines the forces of some of Britain’s top researchers in the field of farming, the environment and rural business. We are valued suppliers to many organisations looking for rigorous fundamental and applied research and the powerful application of data.

RBR is totally independent, a consortium of leading academic units delivering projects for government, levy-funded research bodies, research councils, and commercial clients.

From our research teams around the country, RBR provides exceptional expertise with deep local knowledge, from specific regional studies, national data collection and analysis, economic and environmental modelling and assessments, to the largest survey of its kind in this country, the Farm Business Survey, carried out for Defra.

Use www.farmbusinesssurvey.co.uk to compare your business to farms in the Farm Business Survey (FBS). Or, make projections of business performance. Projections are made with accurate FBS data and forward market values.

For more information, please visit: www.farmbusinesssurvey.co.uk and www.ruralbusinessresearch.co.uk.

Rade is a digital agency, based in East Anglia, who specialise in creating complex corporate and ecommerce web sites and integrated mobile apps.

Rade started way back in 1996. Since then, we have worked on a huge variety of projects, for clients across many industry sectors but with a strong emphasis on agriculture.

Rade has delivered a wide range of technical solutions to the Agri sector including:

• A mobile app and secure web portal for Clarity Biosolutions that uses Bluetooth to communicate with specialist test equipment
• A sophisticated genetics database for dairy farmers and industry professionals
• An award winning and innovative mobile app for the pig sector to deliver video training in the field
• An agronomy app with interactive pest and disease reporting for the PGRO
• A market data app for beef and sheep farmers built for AHDB.
• A multi-website system for Opico’s six brands
• An integrated corporate website, members extranet and back office system for FramFarmers

We understand that building strong relationships with our clients is key to our success. Our skilled team will work closely with you to ensure nothing is overlooked. We’ll be there in the long-term to help you increase productivity and achieve your desired results.

Prodata Weather Systems have been supplying cost effective environmental and weather monitoring solutions to the agricultural market for nearly 25 years.

At REAP this year we will be showcasing the Davis EnviroMonitor solution. Since it came to market 12 months ago it has been very well received by growers and producers alike. Prodata prides itself on offering tailor made solutions and providing a customised service to surpass customer expectations.

Plater Bio manufactures novel biostimulants and fertilizers for the agriculture and horticulture industries.

Plater Bio was founded in 2016 and all products are manufactured at our four-hectare factory in Glossop, Derbyshire.

Stand-out products from the Plater Bio portfolio include:

• Gold Leaf – the world’s first fertilizer to contain every essential plant nutrient in a fully soluble form. Can be used as a ‘complete’ fertilizer on field crops, or as a ‘one part’ hydroponic fertilizer.
• Fungal Chitosan – a potent elicitor of plant defence mechanism, used as a bio fungicide/bactericide under EU organic regulations. Plater Bio’s chitosan in manufactured from fungi, not animal waste (as is the industry norm).
• Zinc ammonium citrate – unique chelated micronutrient. Reduced scorch compared to sulphate salts. Biorational, unlike EDTA chelates.
• Liquid Gypsum – 2000 times more active than powdered gypsum. Solution, not a suspension (as is the industry norm).

Plater bio can also supply fertilizer raw materials and contract spray-drying of biological extracts and microbial products.

Find out more at www.platergroup.co.uk/plater-bio

Over 75% of agricultural crops worldwide rely on insects for pollination to ensure increased yields at harvest. In many cases farmers will rent or purchase commercial bee hives during the bloom season. However, the total demand for insect-pollinated crops is increasing five times as fast as available hives. Add to this that the number of wild pollinators is steadily declining, and there is a direct risk to many crops that threatens food security.

Olombria uses specific species of flies to supplement bees as primary pollinators. Flies already do about 30% of the world’s pollination, but the Olombria technology substantially increases their effectiveness. We use advanced, natural chemical signaling and mapping technologies to choreograph their behaviour, placing them just where the crops need them to be.

Find out more at flypollination.com

NIAB is the UK’s fastest growing crop science organisation, with rapidly expanding research capabilities in plant genetics, agronomy, farming systems and data science, the largest national field trials capability, and strong research links with industry, Government and academia.

With headquarters in Cambridge, and regional offices across the country, employing more than 400 people across the UK, NIAB provides scientific research, technical services and practical advice to improve the yield, efficiency and resilience of crop production across the arable, forage and horticulture sectors.

NIAB is at the forefront in the development of new and innovative products, services and research to ensure the best and most recent science and information is translated into practice. For example the online and interactive Potato Yield Modelling service from NIAB Digital, ensures on-farm and supply chain profitability is maximised by generating real-time forecasts of total and graded potato yield across the season.

NIAB is also working to improve disease diagnostic technologies for use in the laboratory, field and farm office. Examples showcased at REAP include MinION, the portable genome sequencing technology, and loop-mediated isothermal amplification, known as LAMP.

Martin Lishman Ltd has over 40 years’ experience of designing and producing crop storage and quality control products. In the context of using agritech solutions to help solve huge post-harvest losses, we will be highlighting ways in which our products help customers reduce waste, increase quality and save time and money.

There will be a chance to look at how users of our Barn Owl Wireless remote monitoring and automatic fan control system make significant storage energy and time cost savings while avoiding costly rejections due to high temperatures or insects.

Preventing waste due to damage and bruising during production, handling and transport of fresh produce is a major benefit of our TuberLog electronic potato. This is now used worldwide in the potato industry. The concept has recently been extended with our latest innovation – ImpacTrack – a temperature and impact logger used to monitor and record damage to more delicate produce such as avocados, sweetcorn, apples and eggs. Advances in 3D printing technology mean that we can create a carrier shell for the logger in virtually any food shape. Users can track progress of produce through the entire post-harvest supply chain, leading to less waste and higher production yields.

Affordable, quality technology to measure and record your climate and growing environment. This technology provides the data for sound decision making – for improving yields, crop quality and conserving water.

Whether you need to remotely monitor soil nutrients, rain, frost, sunlight or almost anything you can think of, our friendly team can configure the ideal monitoring system for your requirements.

We are the authorised and sole UK and Eire distributor for Onset HOBO, in addition to being a Platinum Dealer for Spectrum Technologies and Premium Dealer for Davis and RainWise weather stations.

EnviroMonitors is a division of Tempcon Instrumentation Ltd, established 1980.

Call us on 01243 558280, or email: info@enviromonitors.co.uk Find out more at www.enviromonitors.co.uk

Based on a 6000 acre farm, we are a UK based team of farmers, agronomists and drone operators developing and providing end-to-end drone solutions for agriculture. From crop mapping and analysis to spraying systems, we provide simple to use drone technology and training that makes farming more accurate and efficient.

DroneAG will be showcasing our new drone training courses aimed at farmers and crop consultants, as well as our crop-sensor upgrades for consumer drone systems.

Find out more at droneag.farm.

Do you aspire to reduce your food waste, increase your profits and demonstrate advanced traceability? Take a look at Consus – A Fresher Solution

The Consus software solution has been written specifically for the Fresh Produce Supply Chain, focused on growing, packing and distribution operations serving the multiple retailers. Our cloud based multi-user infrastructure allows you to manage your packing processes, cut waste, increase profits and report on the traceability and quality of your products in real time.

With our fully integrated advanced traceability systems (including full packaging mass balance), you can trace a pallet from field to despatch, and from despatch back to field with full history and Quality Assurance visibility. This greatly assists with BRC audits, and customer compliance. The whole traceability process takes minutes to complete, greatly improving the efficiency of your auditing solutions.

With our pallet temperature alerting and predictive shelf life modelling systems, you can reduce your food waste and increase your profits. See your results using our integrated production costing module that gives full visibility of your production costs / profitability per pack instantly. Visit us on our stand at REAP 2018 for a demonstration to see if Consus is a solution for you.

Read more about Consus Fresh in our article, or find out more at www.consusfresh.co.uk

Next generation Quantitative Lateral Flow Reader and Data Management

Clarity Biosolutions discovers and develops novel technologies for both veterinary and clinical diagnostics. Clarity has developed a portable quantitative lateral flow reader which combines the high-resolution performance of laboratory-based readers with the convenience of a mobile phone app (ClariScan™) which allows:

• Reader control via Bluetooth.
• Data management and analysis.
• User-friendly results display.
• Upload of time-stamped and geo-tagged results to secure cloud database.

With precision lateral flow tests, the reader provides accurate, quantitative results necessary for biomarker analysis for a variety of tests developed both by Clarity and by third party LFD test manufacturers. It is hand-held for pen-side and point-of-sampling use and connects either by USB to a laptop (for charging) or via Bluetooth to a mobile phone, allowing results to be stored temporarily until data can be transmitted and stored securely on a cloud database. The reader is driven by the Clariscan™ App, which has been designed by RADE for both animal health and crop applications.

Analytik is a leading provider of innovative scientific instruments specialising in Molecular Spectroscopy, Spectral Imaging, Remote Sensing, Particle Characterisation, High Shear Homogenisation, Light Measurement and more.

Our solutions for agriculture include:

• Hyperspectral Imaging – lab-based and UAV solutions for disease and weed mapping, monitoring crop growth rate and density, canopy cover, pigment concentration, and high-speed produce processing
• Multispectral Imaging – patented technology for the identification of crop parasites and impurities, analysing meat muscle/fat content and colour, detecting adulteration and food fraud, and monitoring maturity, ripeness, disease, infections and freshness
• Remote Sensing – for forestry, ecology, plant physiology, and crop and soil research

Our solutions are designed to enable maximisation of crop yields, inform effective decision-making, reduce environmental impact and lower costs surrounding use of pesticides, fertiliser, herbicides and water.

With in-house expertise and additional technical support available from our manufacturers, we are able to help commercial, academic and research organisations alike with a wide range agricultural challenges. We offer extensive consultation and support services to ensure customers get the most out of their investment and pride ourselves on the strong relationships we build with our customers, suppliers and partners.

Analytik is proud to be a member of Agri-tech East.

Agrimetrics provides, connects and analyses complex data to drive greater productivity for agrifood businesses and deliver food sustainably. We aim to help solve the global challenges of economically, ethically and environmentally sustainable food production through the use of data, analytics and artificial intelligence.

Agrimetrics will be showcasing its new suite of products: Field Explorer is our new product line which allows you access to data on weather, cropping and soil for 1 or all 1.45 million fields in the UK.

It offers the food and farming industry access to critical field-level parameters in one place.

More information: agrimetrics.co.uk

ADAS applies digital technologies to challenges across the environmental, agricultural and rural sectors and will be showcasing a number of its current Agri-Tech initiatives:

• Agronomics is a new approach for progress in agriculture, addressing questions that matter in networks of farmers, supporters and researchers utilising precision farming technologies, shared data and robust statistics to transform knowledge generation.
• The ADAS Yield Enhancement Network or YEN (www.yen.adas.co.uk) connects agricultural organizations and farmers who are striving to improve crop yields. The YEN is now growing internationally and provides a platform for engagement with farmers, advisers, scientists and industry.
• INNO-VEG is a new EU funded project investigating the potential for high resolution spatial crop data derived from farmer led research to drive innovation in the field vegetable and potato sectors.

Customers choose the combination of sensors for their context (capturing metrics including VPD, dewpoint, soil moisture, light intensity, temperature, humidity, windspeed, airflow and CO2). 30MHz provides a private, scalable mesh network (with the option to easily add more sensors at any time) and an intuitive analytics platform with real-time alerts, visualizations, heatmaps, charts and graphs. Data is easily exportable in CSV, analytics dashboards are easily shared with third parties (with adjustable permissions) and the 30MHz API allows users to connect external data sources (including weather and climate control data).

Real-time crop monitoring helps growers make quick, informed decisions with granular, accurate data. 30MHz customers have see quick payback, cases with ROI >1000%, 5% annual energy savings, labour producitivty and thousands in pesticide reduction too. We will showcasing and sharing these stories at REAP 18.

Some UK’s leading agribusiness Polybell Organic, Tangmere Peppers, Cottage Farms, Madestein, Vitacress Herbs, Wot-a-pollut and Thomas Thomson all work with smart sensing technology.