Objectives of the Product

Farmers lack scalable solutions for managing nitrogen—the most critical nutrient for crop growth, yield, and profits—with existing tools costly, inaccurate, and/or impractical for widescale use. Messium leverages hyperspectral satellites, machine learning, advanced weather forecasting and crop growth models to provide weekly, cost-effective nitrogen assessments for wheat fields, using wavelengths only hyperspectral satellites can detect. Messium provides growers optimised fertiliser timing and quantity recommendations that maximise yield, cut inputs and boost farm profits.

Messium operates a B2B2C sales model, selling its services to corporate agronomy consultancies, fertiliser companies, and large agricultural enterprises. These organisations are the primary customers, purchasing Messium’s solution to enhance their offerings, deliver better client outcomes, and gain a competitive edge in the highly demanding agriculture industry.

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Customers and their Needs

Messium operates a B2B2C model, providing fertiliser companies, agronomy groups, and precision agri-tech startups with nitrogen estimation insights that they integrate into their existing platforms. These partners then deliver Messium’s data to end users—farmers and agronomists—through their established networks, enabling more precise fertiliser recommendations without requiring behavioural changes.

By offering accurate, frequent, and affordable nitrogen insights, Messium helps its B2B partners enhance their services, attract customers, and maintain a competitive edge. Farmers and agronomists benefit from these insights through their existing agritech platforms, improving yield efficiency while reducing costs and environmental impact.

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Targeted customer/users countries

United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, US and Canada.

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Product description

Hyperspectral satellites represent a transformative advancement in remote sensing technology, offering a comprehensive and detailed perspective of Earth’s surface. Unlike conventional satellites that capture imagery across a broad spectrum of wavelengths, hyperspectral satellites break down the electromagnetic spectrum into numerous finely spaced bands, allowing for a highly nuanced analysis of materials and environmental conditions. Our innovation utilises cutting-edge hyperspectral satellite technology to assess wheat crop nitrogen status remotely, addressing sub-optimal nitrogen use in farming. Our primary focus is on developing and implementing a novel wheat nitrogen management system, representing a step-change improvement over current approaches.

We merge existing and new research to translate imagery data into actionable insights, offering nitrogen concentration and optimal application insights. We are building the world’s largest spectral library for wheat nitrogen, accounting for various wheat varieties and soil types across growth stages, matching satellite imagery with ground truth through custom data pipelines. The project yields actionable nitrogen application insights (quantity and timing) and early warning alerts for when crops are becoming nitrogen deficient, delivered via API to existing integrated agri-tech platforms. These outputs empower farmers to optimise nitrogen use, cut costs, and meet regulatory and environmental demands, addressing the need for efficient nitrogen management in agriculture.

Architecture Diagram

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Added Value

The Messium Nitrogen Estimator drives significant nitrogen cost savings for farmers, with annual potential savings or yield boosts in their tens of thousands for most farms. These savings empower farmers to allocate funds more effectively, whether investing in productivity-enhancing technology, increasing employment or addressing personal financial goals.

From an environmental perspective, Messium stands to make substantial contributions to reducing toxic nitrous oxide emissions and mitigating nitrate runoff into drinking water sources. With targeted and precise applications, Messium can maximise nitrogen use efficiency and minimise nitrogen leakage and loss. This aligns closely with governmental regulations being introduced across Europe to better manage nitrate run-off and nitrous oxide emissions.

Compared to other solutions, our product is:

• More accurate – hyperspectral is a step-change improvement over existing multispectral or NDVI-based solutions.
• More frequent – hyperspectral constellations offer weekly data refresh, versus monthly for existing satellite-based solutions.
• Less labour-intensive – data retrieved remotely, requiring little to no farmer input, critically necessitating minimal behaviour change to existing operations.
• More cost-effective – the cost per hectare is less than the amount they are able to generate or save using the product.

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Current Status

The Messium Nitrogen Estimator activity successfully concluded on 28 February 2025 with the completion of the Final Review which took place in Rome, Italy.