With the goal of facing the complex drought that affects the Ñuble region, despite the recent rains, the Catholic University together with the participation of the regional government of Ñuble, and the Chilean Agtech Wiseconn decided to carry out the FIC project “Agricultural innovation to face the drought in Ñuble” focused on reducing the water requirement in fruit production in the area through agricultural innovation.
To date, 23 people have benefited from the soil moisture probes. Farmers and producers from different communes in the Ñuble region: San Carlos, Ñiquen, Chillán, Chillán Viejo, Coihueco, Pinto, El Carmen, Bulnes, San Ignacio and Yungay. The aim is to reach more than 200 beneficiaries of this project, so it is important to give the greatest possible dissemination to the project.
This initiative was born from the context of the severe drought in the region, which reached a rainfall deficit of 40% in 2019, declaring an agricultural emergency in eight communes in the area.
The project focuses on the use of technology through humidity probes, which have become the most efficient and simple method to improve irrigation management. However, there is still a lot of ignorance about how this innovation works on the part of SME producers in the area, due to the lack of training and, above all, the high cost of these probes.
In addition to the latter, Wiseconn's DropControl telemetry tool is also contributing to the optimization of water for farmers in Ñuble. According to Cristóbal Rivas, general manager of the firm, this project “is a great opportunity for both public and private actors to be able to face together the harsh reality reflected in the drought that has affected this area for several years. Technology is an effective tool that can be very useful to reduce the collateral damage that this situation causes and is not being correctly understood or used.”
He adds that “training farmers is very important so that they adapt more and more to the use of these technologies, which is why the contribution that we make as Wiseconn, the Catholic University and the Regional Government of Ñuble is relevant to achieving this objective.”
Democratizing access
This project seeks to democratize access to validated technologies for the management and saving of irrigation water, through savings achieved by mass purchases from renowned operators, and to provide subsidized humidity probes to a significant group of fruit growers who are role models for their peers.
For Juan Pablo Subercaseaux, an agricultural engineer from the Catholic University, who is also the coordinator of the FIC project, “the widespread use of this innovation in the measurement of soil water levels will allow us to maximize the potential of plants and the quality of their fruits and, at the same time, will achieve significant savings in irrigation water, and therefore savings in electricity in fruit trees that today have technologically advanced irrigation.”
He adds that “the region needs to continue modernizing its productions to achieve a better position in the agricultural sector, and this project aims to promote that mission (…) We wanted to get away from theory and provide a field experience where farmers could see first-hand how cutting-edge technologies work that not everyone has access to in their productions.”
Another impact that is sought to be achieved is the validation of new technologies through an experiment in a commercial orchard using irrigation water oxygenation technology with nano bubbles, and to corroborate the potential water savings that this technology generates.
About Wiseconn
WiseConn is a Chilean company specializing in smart irrigation technology. Its work is aimed at improving the management of such an important resource as water in agriculture, all from the cloud and with an advanced local control system.
DropControl, a comprehensive water management platform for agriculture, has been operating since 2006 with the help of four Chilean entrepreneurs: Cristóbal Rivas, Guillermo Valenzuela, Luis Felipe Escobar, and José Ulloa. Its innovation stems from the latest advances in wireless networks for irrigation measurement and automation, which has allowed it to expand its borders to 10 states in the US, as well as fields in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Central America, Europe, Australia, and Turkey.
They currently cover more than 500,000 hectares and have more than 18,000 nodes iInstalled in more than 2,000 fields in Chile and the USA.
Nearly 112 ppeople who work for the firm, 23 development engineers, support teams for Latin America and the US, and a sales team with a special focus on Latin America and the United States. This brings the total to six regional offices around the world, located in Santiago, Viña del Mar, Fresno, Trento, Mildura, Australia; Los Angeles, and one that will soon open in Madrid. All of this was completed in the first quarter.
In late 2022, the firm completed a Series B capital raise led by Morningside Group, a private equity and venture capital firm based in Boston, USA, to finance its international expansion.
