What does ‘early’ really mean in crop diagnostics?
- Fotenix Team
- Oct 9
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 10
At a glance:
Growers make dozens of decisions every day, but timing is everything. Detecting stress before it’s visible reduces the number and scale of interventions needed, saving time, inputs, and yield. Fotenix uses multispectral imaging to spot subtle changes in plant health days or even weeks before human scouts can, cutting detection time by up to 80% in controlled environments. When combined with sensor data, this insight helps growers act faster, use resources more precisely, and build stronger, more resilient crops.
Growers make dozens of decisions every day – how to balance the growing environment, when to intervene, and to what extent. If there is a problem, the sooner it’s identified, the fewer decisions it takes to fix, since early detection of issues in crops reduces the number of interventions required and limits their scale. Issues that might otherwise demand expansive treatment can instead be addressed early with targeted interventions or a minor adjustment to lighting, water, or nutrients.
The point at which detection counts as ‘early’ is subjective, early detection in a field crop could be late in a controlled environment. In practice, ‘early’ means identifying risks before they would otherwise become visible.
Speeding up detection with tech
But how do you spot problems before they can be seen? In most greenhouses, detection relies on human crop walks. Formal walkthroughs are typically carried out weekly or twice weekly, with informal checks happening in between. While sensible from a labour deployment standpoint, this cadence leaves a gap in which pests, nutrient imbalances, or environmental stresses can progress unseen.
That’s why growers are increasingly relying on crop diagnostics technology to help plug those gaps. Automated crop monitoring systems, spectral cameras, and environmental sensors are now widely used in UK and EU greenhouses to speed up detection.
How plants reflect and absorb light changes when they come under pressure, often days ahead of noticeable symptoms. Imagining technologies capture these changes, making the tech a useful indicator of possible issues. Greenhouse studies into hyperspectral imaging show it can detect nutrient deficiencies in greenhouse crops before leaf yellowing sets in.
Multispectral imaging, like the Fotenix system, is cheaper than hyperspectral imaging and better suited to applications on farm. Problems in crops start very small – too small for the human eye to detect – and look different under different colours. Unlike hyperspectral, which uses lots of colours and low resolution cameras, multispectral uses fewer colours at a higher resolution to image plants, making it a more practical solution on farm. From our own experience, multispectral imaging in controlled environments reduces the time to dect issues by around 80%, meaning problems are identified in days rather than weeks, and long before they’re visible to manual scouts. In field systems, detection is typically 30–40% faster than standard crop walks.
Other precision agricultural tools are being leveraged alongside this tech to create smart environments capable of withstanding even the most volatile conditions. Environmental sensors are far from new and monitor humidity, temperature, and soil moisture continuously. Sensor data, combined with insight from imaging systems, can be used to optimise the environment for plant health and yeild, making sure growers are deploying the right resources, at the right time, in the right place.
From detection to decision
In the context of early detection, there are two clocks that matter. Detecting an issue is only half of the problem; the second clock growers care about is the time from detection to decision.
Crop diagnostics technology is of limited use if it can only alert to an issue. To make a meaningful difference, a system must be able to pinpoint the location of the issue, identify it and advise on how severe it is. This gives growers the insight to make decisions on how to address the problem quickly and confidently.
Commercially, this offers a number of benefits:
ROI: Identifying problems early allows for targeted interventions, which means fewer wasted sprays, less crop loss, and more consistent quality. Growers spend less on inputs and avoid yield loss.
Supply chain credibility: Collecting data at a plant level allows for full traceability, you can identify individual plants, document all the interventions they received, and trace their journey from installation to harvest.
Labour efficiency: Automated daily crop walks mean staff aren’t spending hours manually inspecting crops; instead, they can focus their time on high-value tasks.
Spotting issues before they’re visible
In practice, early detection isn’t about a fixed number of days or a single definition. It’s about spotting and addressing a problem before it becomes visible, keeping interventions and disruptions minimal, and maximising plant health and productivity.
For the first time, crop diagnostics technology like Fotenix is making early detection not only possible, but accessible to units big and small. To discover the difference early detection to make to your bottom line, contact us today.
