Agvolution

AGVOLUTION is working on climate-smart solutions for agriculture, horticulture and public green spaces. The local effects of climate change on both agricultural crops and our urban green spaces are unmistakable worldwide. At the same time, the current shortages and cost increases require a more efficient use of water, fertilisers and the limited available workforce. To this end, the company has developed an AI-based environmental forecasting system and innovative IoT environmental sensors.

  • 2020 Founded in
  • 13 Employees
  • 1.4 m € Revenue

The idea
What it's about

AGVOLUTION is a spin-off from the Universities of Göttingen and Erlangen-Nuremberg. The company specialises in the development, production and distribution of AI software and energy self-sufficient environmental sensor systems for agriculture, forestry, horticulture and urban greenery. AGVOLUTION offers comprehensive services, including the development and commercialisation of software and hardware solutions. AGVOLUTION uses innovative technologies such as IoT wireless sensor networks, satellite data, geodesy and AI methods to create comprehensive data sets for describing, analysing and forecasting environmental conditions.
The CLIMAVI IoT sensor technology can be used globally to collect the necessary reference data for high-resolution AI forecasts in a cost-efficient manner. Agvolution already operates the largest soil moisture and soil temperature measurement network in Germany.
The environmental AI FARMALYZER combines all relevant weather, soil, plant and management data to determine the ecological and economic optimum in crop production. Over 2 million hectares of land are already being analysed by FARMALYZER. It is the first time that a complex environmental AI has become a fully automated software product for practical applications and commercial use.
AGVOLUTION's innovations allow the economic and ecological effects to be determined and interpreted locally and over time. For example, it is possible to irrigate more efficiently or to adjust fertiliser consumption to the necessary level at a fraction of the cost of today's technical solutions.

The team
Who is behind it

AGVOLUTION is an interdisciplinary team from the fields of computer science, electrical engineering, physics, data science and agribusiness. Sebastian Jerratsch, Thomas Maier, Lukas Kamm, Dr Munir Hoffmann and Andreas Heckmann have been working as a team on the implementation of climate-smart AGVOLUTION since 2019. Initially organised as a GbR, the founders received awards, including the NBANK start-up grant, before the GmbH was founded in March 2020.
The founders had already known each other for a long time. Lukas and Thomas had already developed a soil moisture sensor for space travel as students in the EU:CROPIS project on indoor plant cultivation in space stations. Sebastian built rockets as a student and has been programming since he could write. Munir has researched the relationships between plant management and the environment in different crops in over 30 peer-reviewed publications in order to put these findings into practice with AGVOLUTION. Andreas comes from a farm, worked in agribusiness after studying agriculture and had the initial idea for AGVOLUTION. This is because during crop cultivation advice, the crucial data such as temperatures and moisture levels were always missing in order to be able to reliably deduce the infection of a leaf disease or the mineralisation of soil nitrogen in the individual sub-areas. With AGVOLUTION, this problem can be solved, enabling climate-adapted and profitable plant cultivation.

How are we supposed to adapt to local climate risks and grow crops profitably if we can't even determine, let alone predict, the temperature and humidity of our soil? This is exactly what we supply measurement technology and AI software for.

Andreas Heckmann

CEO & CO-Founder

Success story
EIPNUTREE

AGVOLUTION has made significant progress since our time at the Seedhouse. Of particular note is the joint acquisition of the EIP project NuTree, which focuses on the sustainable management of trees in urban areas. In collaboration with partners such as Bonk Pflanzen Handels GmbH and the City of Hanover, we are developing technologies to optimise the water availability of trees using sensor technology, AI modelling and a visualisation platform. The project aims to support tree nurseries, garden centres and public green space operators with sensor-based decision-making tools,

 

to reduce resource consumption and increase efficiency. Our CLIMAVI IoT sensor technology plays a central role in this by providing continuous data on temperature and soil moisture and ensuring data exchange with other sensor systems and irrigation controllers as software. We are also a member of AgroTechVallery e.V. and are involved in commercial and research-driven projects in the region.

Find out more
more info about Agvolution

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