Ecowise

Welcome to another Trash Talking Friday, the only trash talk that has been won an Olympic Gold for talking trash!

Each week, I send you Ideas to ponder about. Ideas that have the potential to change your life, and hopefully help you become a better human being by understanding yourself.

This week, in the Trash Talking newsletter I talk about robotic bees and how they are being used to pollinate fruits and vegetables.

Let’s get into it!

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What is pollination:

Simply put, pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anther, which is the male part of the flower, to the stigma, which is the female part of the flower. Certain flowers are self-pollinating, where the anther passes to the stigma within the same flower. Here is an interesting fact: flowers pollinated by bees most often bloom in day time. They have different colors, but seldom the color red.

Many fruits and vegetables that we eat require pollination. From avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash, and sunflowers for oil, cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwis, cherries, cranberries and melons. For other crops such as blue berries and almonds, the honey bee is essential. Its estimated that about 80% of the US crops for these two items are pollinated by honey bees.

The Challenge:

Climate change, pesticide use, habitat loss, have played havoc in the lives of bees. Although they are not in immediate immanent threat of extinction, their number along with that of vitally important insects are dropping globally. The humble bumble bee seems to have taken the brunt of this man-made disaster in the making.

Also, as the population of the world rises, so does the demand for food and the need to increase agricultural yield to feed the ever growing amount of mouths.

Introducing Pollination Robots:Entrepreneurs and their start-up’s across the globe are now using artificial intelligence to help pollinate plants, with tests already underway with an Australian company ready to deploy a fleet to robotic bees to pollinate tomato’s in its greenhouse.

The Technology & Company behind this: Deep learning has evolved over the past decade to improve the ability of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to recognise images and mimic the human brain. Using this deep leaning and AI, start-ups have been able to develop a robot that is capable to accurately identify flowers for pollination.

These robots are being developed by an Israeli company by the name of Arugga AI farming. Their robots travel down a row in greenhouses, identify what plants need to be pollinated using AI and cameras and then blast air at the flower to pollinate it. The company claims to have one algorithm to detect flowers anywhere in the world and has captured tens and thousands of images and videos using each frame as a separate image.

Use Case:In majority of the countries greenhouse owners pay who grow tomato’s pay for bumble bees. Tomato’s, unlike other crops pollinate themselves once vibrations shake the pollen free and bumble bee use vibrations from their flight muscles once they land on the flower. But in Australia, there are no bumble bees in most of the country and import of them is restricted due to strict bio-diversity laws, hence Australian greenhouse farmers growing Tomatoes have to rely on human workers using a vibrating wand to shake the plants, in an effort to mimic the bumble bee. So, Costa group Holdings Ltd, an Australian grower who tested these robots and was more than satisfied by their ability to deliver the desired results is now deploying them in hordes across its Greenhouses.

It’s my personal belief that many of the things that we have seen in sci-films will eventually come true, with the hope that these innovations will help better our quality of life while protecting our environment. Innovation is agriculture is much needed here in India, where the importance of improving agricultural yield is of utmost importance, while reducing and eventually doing away with chemicals and pesticides used to protect and increase farm yield and reduce wastage.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter! Wishing you a very sustainable and happy week ahead and see you in your inbox next Friday!