Objectives of the Product

Irreo aims at enabling growers to automate their irrigation systems in an intelligent and efficient way to mitigate drought problems caused by ongoing climate change, a factor that has made irrigation an increasingly delicate and complex process to manage. However, to cope with this, growers increasingly tend to use technological solutions that present certain critical issues:

• soil moisture sensors are very expensive and provide only one-point data to make irrigation decisions, resulting in non-uniform production throughout the plot;
• growers spend time converting the provided irrigation advice into an actual irrigation planning;
• growers spend time to modify the irrigation schedules on their controllers to follow the elaborated irrigation planning.

Incorrect use of technological solutions can lead to inefficient irrigation, thus wasting water and energy and reaching high operating costs, but also to poor harvest and risks for crop survival.

In view of all this, the Irreo platform uses satellite data, AI and automation to

• provide crop water requirements without the need to buy, install and maintain sensors;
• provide an optimal irrigation scheduling that dynamically adapts to weather and crop water requirements, while considering irrigation system constraints and agronomic strategy;
• the irrigation plan is automatically downloaded to our controllers to perform variable rate irrigation.

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Customers and their Needs

The Irreo platform was conceived and designed particularly for farms growing crops irrigated by drip irrigation systems. Growers and all professionals who support them in the management of the crop irrigation process are our main target customers: these people have a great responsibility, as irrigation is among the activities that most affect the quality and quantity of the harvest, especially for certain types of crops. Moreover, often poorly managed irrigation can mean waste of water and energy, higher costs or even serious damage to the crop or its total loss. The implications of climate change have made the situation even more complicated.

As the main objective of the customer is to cultivate the crop in the best possible way, given that this is directly linked to the profitability of the farm, the grower needs to optimise irrigation:

• deciding when and how much to irrigate precisely and affordably;
• scheduling daily irrigation automatically and dynamically;
• relying on an irrigation decision support system connected to the automation system controlling the irrigation plant;
• relying on a tool to understand how the crop is growing and whether there are any problems

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Targeted customer/users countries

Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco and Turkey.

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Product description

The Irreo platform is an advanced irrigation system that combines the potential of modern satellite observation technology, AI and automation to increase crop yield through improved water efficiency, resulting in reduced irrigation costs.

The platform consists of three main modules:

1. Satellite-based crop water requirements: Irreo uses different satellite data and machine learning algorithms to estimate the actual evapotranspiration of different types of crops, with a high spatial resolution and a daily revisit time, without the need to buy, install and maintain any soil moisture sensors on the field.
2. Optimal irrigation scheduling: Irreo provides optimal and dynamic irrigation scheduling, recommending when and how much to irrigate for each sector, taking into account the water requirements of the farm’s crops, the constraints of the irrigation system, and the grower’s agronomic strategies.
3. Variable rate (or dynamic) irrigation: the optimal irrigation scheduling elaborated by Irreo is automatically downloaded to our controllers to perform variable rate irrigation on each sector, managing solenoid valves, fertilizers, mixers, pumps, filters and alarms. Using our controllers, our users will have the ability to dynamically irrigate each sector of their plot in fully automatic manners and manage the entire irrigation process remotely from our app.

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Added Value

To cultivate the crop in the best way, the grower needs to optimally manage irrigation.
Nowadays, (s)he monitors growth and health of crops and decides when and how much to irrigate every field sector relying on experience or sensor technology.
The first scenario presents several risk variables and takes time, while the second one is expensive, time-consuming and risks to be economically disadvantageous, thus leading to incorrect use of technology, with consequences on the yield.
Once (s)he has collected data, it is time to translate them into a realistic and efficient irrigation plan and then start it manually or set the various schedules via the automation system. These operations should be done every day and are not risk-free.
With Irreo, the grower constantly receives precise and useful data on the app and can rely on an optimal irrigation plan that dynamically adapts to weather and crop water requirements, while considering irrigation system constraints and agronomic strategy, and that is automatically transferred to the irrigation system through our controllers.

Irreo’s innovations imply:

• time savings, as the grower needs some minutes per day to optimally manage irrigation;
• a 16% increase in water saving.
• 30 mm more evapotranspiration in the season with an estimated 11% increase in yield.

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Current Status

The project kick-off was held in July 2024, and the preparation of the requirements review has been completed.