It’s called Pats-X and it’s very small drone, which, moving in greenhousesis able to identify the presence of flying insects, harmful to the crops, and eliminate them by cutting them with its rotors. This is an innovation, still in the testing phase, that could be useful against many insects, such as Tuta absoluta, reports the Italian publication agronotizie.
The decrease in the number of authorized active substances and the increasingly strict restrictions on their use put farmers in serious difficulties, especially those who work in greenhouses, where environmental conditions can favor the development of large populations of harmful insects.
If in the past their control was mainly based on the use of insecticides, in recent years the farmer has been forced to find alternatives. Thus, over the years, integrated pest management strategies such as the use of sexual confusion, nets, beneficial insects, and biocontrol products have been developed. The latest in chronological order is the arrival of drones in the field.
Pats is a Dutch startup based in The Hague – home of greenhouse production – that has developed a system for the mechanical removal of harmful insects in protected crops. The system consists of two parts: Pats-C, which is a sensor that provides constant monitoring of insects in the field in the greenhouse, and Pats-X, a small drone capable of intercepting unwanted guests and eliminating them by cuts with its rotor blades.
Pats-C is installed inside the greenhouse and monitors, by using electromagnetic waves in the infrared range, the fields of all insects, regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful. The information thus collected is processed by software capable of identifying individual species based on their size and characteristic flight trajectories.
In this way, Pats-C provides the farmer with a constantly updated overview of the number, species and population dynamics of insects present in the greenhouse.
Subsequently, the ground station informs the drone about the possible presence of harmful insects. Pats-X flies and thanks to its built-in sensors that mimic the hunting system of bats, it is able to identify its prey in flight and intercept it with its rotors. Thus, the insect ceases to be a threat to the crop.
The strength, highlighted by the founders of the startup, is that the method allows the presence of harmful insects to be identified early and eliminated mechanically, without the use of plant protection products and without causing damage to good insects, such as bumblebees.
However, the actual ability of the ground station to identify the insects and the drone to intercept their flight remains to be seen. If, for example, for species such as Lepidoptera, the large size can make capture relatively easy, for insects of extremely small size and characterized by flight close to plants, such as Tuta absolute system performance may be compromised.
However, it is an interesting innovation that could pave the way for the use of drones in greenhouses.
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