Agricultural aircraft monitoring agtech grows 120% in two years

The rationalization of agribusiness investments in pesticide applications and society's demand for more sustainable agriculture gave rise, around five years ago, to the startup Dominus Soli. Creator of cutting-edge software for monitoring agricultural planes, called Spray Plan, the company grew 120% between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 harvests. For the 2019-20 cycle, Dominus Soli's goal is to double its revenue by expanding its client portfolio in the agricultural frontier.

According to the company's founding partners, Antonio Loures and Marco Antonio Lino, the Spray Plan software emerged from an innovation project and today transfers a set of relevant information to agribusiness managers to evaluate the results of agricultural pesticide applications via aerial. Recently, the tool also received adaptations to guide drone flights when applying products to crops.

Data from the company, according to its partners, indicate that the adoption of the system increases the effectiveness of pesticide coverage from 75% to up to 96% of a treated area. “By diagnosing application failures, the system expands the productive potential of crops and at the same time protects living organisms that are not on target, such as bees”, summarizes partner Lino. The company's customers, he notes, are mainly sugar and ethanol plants and cotton, rice, citrus, fruit and soy producers.

For partner Loures, the growing need for rural producers to reconcile agricultural productivity with mitigating the environmental impact of agricultural pesticides boosted the startup's business once and for all. “We have grown a lot, and will continue to grow, by delivering robust results to the producer”, he highlights.

According to executives, the Spray Plan software is already on its third update. “The system plans, evaluates and corrects parameters such as programmed bandwidth, effective application, flow rate, volumes of mixture deposited outside planned areas, areas not covered by products and overlapping applications. It is also possible to control and redirect the volume of inputs used”, continues Lino.

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Partner Antonio Loures recalls that one of the company's clients recorded direct losses of around R$700 in inputs supplied to aircraft, while, on the other hand, there was an expectation of a gain of at least R$1,8 million in the harvest, towards investment in agrochemicals. “At least 16% of its area, of 30 thousand hectares, was not covered by the fungicide. In other words, around 5 thousand hectares remained without effective treatment, despite all the product shipped.”

Also according to its partners, Dominus Soli recently became a partner of Alvo Consultoria, considered a reference in the training and dissemination of knowledge on the application of agrochemicals. The Alvo method, reinforce Loures and Lino, transfers cutting-edge results to crop treatments. Alvo is managed by consultant Glauberto Moderno.

“We work with the aim of integrating all parties involved in aerial application: agronomists, pilots and aviation service providers”, concludes Marco Antonio Lino.