MOLINE, Illinois — John Deere today announced the acquisition of Sentera, a provider of remote imagery solutions for agriculture. The company expects the acquisition to advance the capabilities of John Deere’s existing technology offerings, providing farmers and ag service providers with a more comprehensive set of tools to generate and use data to make decisions that improve farm profitability, efficiency, and sustainability.
Headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, Sentera makes cameras that are compatible with most major drone platforms and enable farmers and crop scouts to quickly and efficiently capture high-resolution data at scale. When combined with FieldAgent software tools, they help farmers and agronomists assess plant-level health, identify stressors, and take action. In addition, SMARTSCRIPT™ Weeds, a customized herbicide prescription, can be delivered to sprayers with individual nozzle control.
Drones equipped with Sentera technology fly over fields at high speeds and generate high-resolution images. These images are processed with Sentera’s FieldAgent application to identify the exact location of specific weeds and generate a weed map. This map becomes a targeted prescription for how much product a farmer needs to load into their sprayer, helping minimize waste. Once the prescription is generated, it can be wirelessly sent to compatible equipment through the John Deere Operations Center.
Weed maps are just one example of actionable data that is enabled with Sentera scouting technology. The same process can be used in a field to assess crop stand uniformity, disease pressure, and pests. Integrating Sentera also supports John Deere’s approach to meeting farmers where they are on the technology adoption journey. It offers new precision capabilities to a broad range of customers while also complementing more advanced precision ag technologies, including See & Spray™.
Sentera will continue to supply cameras directly to drone manufacturers for integration into their products, as well as sell to farmers, agronomists, ag retailers, and other users. The John Deere Operations Center will continue to be open for other drone imagery providers for integration, as well, ensuring customers and their trusted advisors continue to have choices on the solutions that work best for their operation.