Feds help college with vineyard research tool

The federal government has provided Niagara College with nearly $100,000 for new technology to help students and the wine industry with research and crop management.

On Monday, Minister of Science and Sport Kirsty Duncan visited the Niagara-on-the-Lake campus to celebrate the $94,000 grant made possible through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s College and Community Innovation program.

The money has been spent on ‘RoamIO Jumbo,’ an advanced, rugged land rover that’s able to patrol vineyard rows with ease, helping farmers increase profitability or even save their crop from damaging weather.

The machine also comes with a complement of unmanned aerial systems and modern high-performance computing.

The applied research tools and instruments program helps the college’s research and innovation division advance its precision agriculture strategies and collaborate with industry partners to help them farm smarter.

This practice provides solutions to cut costs, increase productivity and to support environmental stewardship; and it involves using modern hardware and data in support of farm management practices, says a release from the college.

Niagara College’s array of smart farming technologies helps farmers better predict weather, generate accurate forecasts for regions as small as a single farm field — all in a day or two in advance of harmful events.

RoamIO Jumbo will be outfitted with sensor capabilities to monitor weather and temperatures, and ultimately yield estimations in a vineyard. The smart land rover will also be equipped with cameras so it can be used to view the grape quantity.

The piece of equipment was developed by Korechi Inc., a robotics and automation company in Hamilton, founded by engineer Sougata Pahari.