ROSARIO, ARGENTINA - Innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) enables the opening up of new market horizons and Argentina has been a beneficiary of that, thanks to contributions from within the nation’s startup ecosystem.

Following the merger of two powerful sectors of Argentina’s economy, agriculture and software development, a number of agrotechnology companies have emerged in the country in recent years that are now well valued throughout the world.

Argentina-based DeepAgro, e.g., a startup that seeks solutions to agricultural problems through AI, developed an intelligent weed detection system to carry out a selective application and thus reduce the use of herbicides.

What is DeepAgro and How Does it Work?

DeepAgro combines AI software, red, green, blue (RGB) cameras, a micro-computer, and a solenoid valve, to detect weeds and differentiate them from crops, and control each nozzle for precise spraying.

To achieve this purpose, the AI software was developed based on a number of studies and white papers, since the type of solution to the problem requires that it works outdoors, without an Internet connection, and in remote places where there is no signal. For this reason, it could not be vendor-based, and the system had to be developed from scratch and optimized to run in real time through hardware devices.

The algorithm was trained to detect the morphology of the plant species to differentiate the weed from the crop, e.g., soybeans. It also learned how the crop is planted, e.g., the grooves typical of agricultural activity.

The software algorithm training was carried out through agreements with International Business Machines Corporation, and with Amazon Web Services (AWS), through its supercomputers, and the machine learning process is controlled and supervised by the DeepAgro team of profess