An agri-tech startup has secured nearly £800,000 to grow its business and develop new crop scouting technology.
The funds have been raised to progress the app Skippy Scout, which uses drones to automatically capture images.
These are then analysed by artificial intelligence to offer arable farmers broad acre crop insight.
The images provide an accurate green area index (GAI), and it counts emerging plants and identifies weeds.
Developers Drone Ag has secured £650,000 of equity funding from 934 investors and a further £145,000 grant from Innovate UK.
The startup's founder, Jack Wrangham, said this was the largest amount of funding secured as a company to date.
"This funding will enable our team to grow and develop new functionality and an Android compatible version of our crop scouting app Skippy Scout.
“We are soon to launch our Scout Sphere functionality which will offer users a unique full field overview that includes the ability to focus on any area of the field and choose where to inspect at leaf-level.”
The capital injection to the business will also be used to complete its base station concept which will see the launch of new remote drone scouting.
Mr Wrangham added: “Skippy Nest can be installed on any farm and operated from anywhere in the world. It will revolutionise the way drones can be operated to help scout crops.”
