Completed Food & Agriculture Engineering

A holistic non-destructive data driven demonstrator to quantify potato crops during growth to realise maximum marketable yield and help reduce waste, contributing to net zero emissions - TUBERSCAN-DEMO

Funder UKRI
Recipient organisation B-hive Innovations Limited
Funding £1.9M
Period Aug 2020 — Sept 2023

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Potato growers now have a way to see underground—without digging—using sensors that measure tuber size and number while the crop is still in the soil. The problem is timing. Harvest too early and potatoes are undersized; too late and they overshoot buyer specifications. Either way, up to a fifth of the crop can become unsaleable, wasting fuel, fertiliser, and water. Current methods rely on guesswork or destructive sampling. This project builds on a proof-of-concept system that combines ground-penetrating radar with above-ground plant data to calculate average tuber size and total yield across an entire field. If the demonstrator works at commercial scale, growers could make data-driven decisions about when to lift each part of a field, or even selectively harvest only the ready tubers. The project estimates a 5–10% increase in marketable UK potato production. That would reduce waste along the supply chain, cut the carbon footprint of wasted inputs, and help the potato industry move toward net-zero emissions. For consumers, it means more consistent supply and less food waste before it reaches the shop.

View original technical description
Determining the correct date on which to harvest potatoes is one of the most critical decisions potato growers must make. If they lift their potatoes too early, they may be below the optimum size resulting in less than the maximum potential output being produced, if they lift them too late, they may be too large to meet buyer specifications making them unsaleable. Either way the grower loses potential income. A recent proof of concept Innovate UK project (TUBERSCAN) has shown that it is possible to use new technologies to non-invasively measure the total biomass of potato tubers in the soil. Combining this with above ground data of potato plants, number of tubers per potato plant can be accurately determined. In addition, research has been conducted to create a cost-effective technology solution that supports the above on a commercial platform. The aim of this project is to build on the findings from the TUBERSCAN project to develop and test an innovative demonstrator system to measure and map average tuber sizes and yield throughout potato fields. This data will provide insights to will drive early interventions and/or selective harvesting to take place, thereby optimising crop yield and resource use. It is anticipated that this technology could generate an estimated 5 - 10% increase in UK marketable potato production, while assisting with reducing waste throughout the supply chain, working towards net zero emissions in the potato industry.

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Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

TUBERSCAN-VENTURE: Delivering a commercially-viable, non-destructive, data driven pipeline to quantify root crops during growth to realise maximum marketable yield and help reduce waste, contributing to net zero emissions
A novel non-destructive solution to quantify and qualify potato crops during growth to realise maximum marketable yield and help to reduce waste - TUBERSCAN
Potato LITE – Low Intensity Tillage Enhancements for Sustaining Potato Production in Future Regenerative Agricultural Systems
TuberZone – Development of an innovative spatial crop model and decision support system for improved potato agronomy
Developing practical guidance and evidence of sustainable practices, working towards a net-zero potato supply chain - TuberNetZero

Original classification

Collaborative R&D

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