We are pleased to announce that the radar module of Fertisat service has won the recognition of the Competition Jury composed of the top experts in the Polish agricultural community, and is among the Gold Medalists of the POLAGRA PREMIERY 2024 fair in Poznań!

The new module is based on satellite SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imagery, which minimizes the dependence on weather conditions when generating application maps and allows to create accurate recommendations regarding doses of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These functions enable farmers to optimize fertilization, saving production resources and improving the economic efficiency of farms. Development of the awarded solution lasted over 3 years and was co-financed by the Pomeranian Development Agency under the Regional Operational Program of the Pomeranian Voivodeship.

We thank the agricultural experts for their recognition, the sponsors for their support, and we encourage farmers and companies from the ag sector to visit our stand (No. 11, Pavilion 5A) on January 19-21, 2024, where you will be able to learn more about the new version of Fertisat service.

We invite you to visit our stands at Central Agricultural Fair in Nadarzyn near Warsaw (December 8-10, 2023) and at POLAGRA PREMIERY Fair in Poznań (January 19-21, 2024). There will be an opportunity to see the new version of Fertisat service, in which we have implemented several new, very useful functions. One of them is a generator of application maps for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers based on analysis of satellite radar images. As radar data can be obtained regardless of weather conditions, we are now able to offer application maps at any time the farmer chooses. This is important in fully or partially cloudy conditions, which often make it difficult or impossible to acquire and analyse optical images during periods of intense field works.

Another event this year where we will be present is Agro Show Fair in Bednary near Poznań, organized on September 22-24. We invite you to our booth: No. 10 in the Exhibition Hall.

We invite potato growers, agronomists and everyone interested in Irriget and Fertisat services to visit our stands at the Potato Day organized by the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Żelazna near Skierniewice on July 7 and at the National Potato Fair in Gronowice in Opole province on August 30-31 (stand N13).

Irriget service in its 2^nd year of operation is already used by more than 200 Polish potato growers. During the events we will encourage more farmers to try out the service free of charge. For cereals and oilseed rape producers we also recommend Fertisat service, which provides maps of precise nitrogen fertilization, and from this autumn also calculators and maps of phosphorus and potassium fertilization.

We have added a new function to Irriget service that allows the use of data from METOS® weather stations. By importing data from stationary or virtual stations, farmers who are users of METOS system can increase the accuracy of our calculations of actual evapotranspiration and the subsequent irrigation recommendations.

Later this season we will incorporate data from non-commercial meteo services and weather stations into Irriget. We strive to estimate water needs in each field on an ongoing basis and to provide our clients with precise information and advice with resolution of up to one are.

From 15 May this year the clients of the Potato Department of the international distribution company PROCAM will receive from us a weekly Report presenting the condition of crops in their fields. The report, generated using Irriget service, will also contain the most up-to-date water balance data and alerts informing about the risk of potato diseases and water shortages.

We encourage both potato growers and other farmers who irrigate crops to test Irriget free of charge and to consider subscribing to this practical, user-friendly service. 

ECPA, Europe’s most prestigious precision farming conference, will take place on 2-6 July 2023 in Bologna. Our paper “Field-scale winter wheat growth monitoring and yield forecasting using SAR and optical data fusion” has been selected by the organizers for presentation at the conference and for publication by Wageningen Academic Publishers. In the paper we presented the results of a 3-year research on the use of radar and optical satellite data to analyze the condition of crops and to forecast yields. This was a part of the R&D project co-funded by the Pomeranian Development Agency under the Pomorskie Voivodeship Regional Operational Programme.

We continue to actively promote Irriget service, which supports farmers in managing crop irrigation. Our clients get access to information that allows them to optimize the amount of water to be used, to select the best irrigation dates and to spatially diversify water doses.

The service was presented in detail at the Potato Seminar organized on 22 February 2023 by Top Agrar – the largest agricultural monthly in Poland. You can read the relavant article (in Polish) and watch the informative interview (again, only in Polish) with Mateusz Stankiewcz, an agronomist in Wasat. 

Irriget and other products of Wasat were promoted as part of a trade mission of Polish companies to Australia organized by the Polish Space Agency and the Pomeranian Development Agency. Between 28 February and 3 March there was an opportunity to learn more about our offer at the AVALON 2023 Exposition, as well as at B2B meetings in Melbourne and Sydney.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to cooperate on the international expansion of Irriget or if you are interested in the service subscription.

On January 13-15, 2023, we invited the attendees of Polagra Premiery International Agricultural Fair in Poznań to our booth, and on January 18-19, 2023 those who visited the Fruit and Vegetable Industry Fair in Kielce to our booth there. We demonstrated to farmers and everyone interested the use of Irriget and Fertisat services and presented the benefits these services brought. We exchanged opinions on the state of precision agriculture, proposed attractive terms of ordering our services or discussed business cooperation with our company.

Thank you for the meetings at those events. Do not hesitate to contact us by email or by phone.  

We are pleased to inform that the organizers of Polagra Premiery International Agricultural Fair awarded our company the Gold Medal for Irriget service. The rewards go to products that are distinguished by innovation and are based on proprietary solutions.

We would like to thank the Evaluation Board members and we encourage farmers and companies from the agricultural industry to visit our stand (No. 15, Pavilion 5A) where the award-winning service will be presented on 13-15 January, 2023.

We are entering the 2022/2023 agricultural season with a renewed offer of field management zones determination. Delineating homogeneous production zones enables variable rate application of fertilizers (especially phosphorus, potassium and the first dose of nitrogen), of plant protection products as well as precise sowing.

To prepare management zones maps we use satellite data from several preceding growing seasons – we select them carefully, analyze data using proprietary algorithms, determine the productivity of a given field and then divide it into site-specific zones. According to the calculations done by our clients, the use of such maps enables optimization of production costs and contributes to a higher yield.

Field management zones can be ordered from us by e-mail or telephone, and next year they will be included in the Fertisat.com service portfolio.

International Astronautical Congress is the largest annual event in the space sector. On September 17-22 the Congress was organised in Paris, and Wasat was one of 20 Polish companies that presented their products and services at the stand of the Polish Space Agency. Our displayed services: Jupyteo and Irriget caught the attention of many visitors, and some of them have already become our clients.

Irriget is gaining more and more popularity among farmers and especially among potato producers using irrigation systems. They especially value information about the current field-scale water balance, which is calculated daily using satellite data. Thanks to our service a farmer can reduce costs associated with investing in stationary soil moisture sensors and meteorological stations as well as with the irrigation itself, and also obtain crops of better quality and quantity.

On 19-21 August we demonstrated Irriget service at the Potato Poland 2022 International Fair.

Everyone who is interested in using our service or starting business cooperation is always welcome to contact us by e-mail or telephone.

After a nearly two-year break, we resumed the promotion of our solutions at stationary trade fairs. At the Fruit and Vegetable Fair in Nadarzyn – the largest event in 2022 in Poland organized for the horticulture sector – we presented the new Irriget service. It is a service based on advanced algorithms for estimating evapotranspiration that supports decisions on irrigation of crops. Our offer met with great interest of fruit and vegetable growers for whom the time of irrigation as well as the size and distribution of water doses are very important, especially in the period of drought.

After this year’s rape and cereal harvest we assessed the accuracy of our algorithms to estimate the size and spatial distribution of crops using Sentinel-1 radar imagery. The resulting yield maps turned out to be very similar to the maps based on data recorded by harvesters in selected farms in the Polish regions of Pomerania and Mazovia.

We have embraced SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imagery because it is resistant to the influence of changing weather conditions, which is a limiting factor for the use of Earth Observation in agriculture. The next step will be to use radar data when creating application maps for mineral fertilizers in Fertisat service, and thus be able to provide the service to our clients independently of cloud cover.

We invite everyone interested in this innovative solution to contact us and we also encourage farmers to use the Fertisat service.

Today we started a new ESA project entitled “EO-based enhancement of maize production for the needs of agri-food and renewable energy industries”. We will use satellite and weather data as well as functions of our FertiSat service to assess the condition of maize crop in Poland (already approx. 1.8 million ha), forecast harvest time, and to estimate the size and quality of corn production. Such information is of interest to maize growers, managers in food and feed industry, and to operators of agricultural biogas plants. During the current season and the next season the service will be developed and tested before incorporation as a new module into the FertiSat service.

Wasat has recently become a business partner of PUH “Chemirol” whose customers, after purchasing selected products, receive a voucher enabling them to use our FertiSat service. Farmers gain access to current satellite field monitoring and to the archive of satellite imagery.

PUH “Chemirol” is the largest distributor of means of agricultural production on the Polish market. The company’s customer advisers reach farmers all over the country on a daily basis and are increasingly present on other Central European markets. The company offers modern solutions in the field of plant protection, foliar fertilization and biostimulation, a wide range of varieties of cereals, rape and maize, as well as mineral fertilizers.

The satellite monitoring in FertiSat service helps farmers to control the condition of their plantations, to select means of production offered by Chemirol and to evaluate the effectiveness of their use.

The difficult year 2020 has finally passed. All in all, it was quite a successful period for our company. We operate in a field of satellite remote sensing, where orbit-based sensors collect data that we process in the computing cloud and we contact our clients mainly via the Internet. Earth Observation has proven to be one of pandemic-resistant sectors of the economy. For example, many Polish farmers became customers of our Fertisat service, and Jupyteo was used by remote sensing experts from several dozen countries.

Presence at fairs and conferences was impossible for almost the entire last year. We hope that in 2021 we will exhibit at some of the events and will meet face-to-face with clients as well as business and research partners. New agriculture and remote sensing specialists joined our team, but we are still looking for talented employees who will help strengthen the position of Wasat on the domestic market and expand our services outside Poland.

Many areas of human activity, with agriculture on top, require reliable, precise and up-to-date information based on satellite imagery. This year, we plan to significantly enhance our offer in order to attract new customers and improve their satisfaction.

Wishing you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year 2021!

Jupyteo service has gained new functions through integration with QGIS application and a full access to pyQGIS libraries. A separate environment was created and a new Docker image was published selected from the list of available images when starting a notebook. By accessing pyQGIS libraries in our service one can now conveniently create scripts using spatial or geostatistical analyses and functions available in QGIS. When creating a new notebook you can easily place geospatial data processing algorithms in one script and use functions of SNAP, OTB, GRASS, QGIS and other programming libraries.

The Minister of Development appointed today Bartosz Buszke as a Board member of the Polish Space Agency for a 5-year term. The candidacy of our company’s CEO has been recommended to the Ministry by the Polish Space Industry Association as a result of a vote in which Bartosz had received the greatest support of the Association’s members.

The Board is an advisory and supervisory body for the Agency that – thanks to the amended legal status, new management and an increased budget – intends to boost its activities in the coming months.

We are pleased to inform that this year’s Golden Crane of Agriculture award in the category “other products related to agricultural activities” was granted to our company for FertiSat service. The competition committee awards Golden Crane statuettes to several outstanding products exhibited at the Central Agricultural Fair in Nadarzyn near Warsaw. The award was solemnly handed out on the first day of the Fair and immediately enriched our booth there.

We thank the expert evaluators for that recognition. All farmers, agronomists and agrobusinesses are welcome to use the service or just to contact our company to learn more about FertiSat.

The debut at the International Agricultural Fair “Polagra Premiery 2020” in Poznań is behind us. Our booth was visited by a large group of current and future clients who were presented with FertiSat service.

We thank all the visitors to our stand and we already invite you to the next event: Central Agricultural Trade Fair in Nadarzyn from 31 January to 2 February 2020 (stand no. 1.13 in hall D).

A new version of Jupyteo is now available. The service offers Docker images with a wide range of libraries that use machine learning along with a toolbox for processing satellite data. The Open Data Cube environment is configured in the form of ready-to-use Docker images, which allows to build easily and quickly one’s own data processing algorithms as data cubes. For each new environment a set of sample Jupyter Notebooks is published with code samples for creating, indexing and initial feeding Earth Observation data to a newly created data cube. New modules expand capabilities of Jupyteo making the service more universal and attractive for users.

For 20 years, Agro Show in Bednary near Poznań has been the largest outdoor agricultural exhibition in Europe. This year, from 19 to 22 September, the fair’s area exceeded 130 ha, there were 130,000 visitors and more than 7oo companies represented.

We were one of those firms that had their booth at Agro Show for the first time – it attracted a lot of interest from visitors. We demonstrated the way of using FertiSat service, informed about its available and planned functionalities, and we learned the opinions and needs of customers. The presence at the Fair was also an excellent opportunity to establish new business contacts in the agricultural sector.

We encourage farmers and agronomists to use FertiSat service and we invite other parties to contact us to discuss business cooperation in further development and popularization of the service.

Participants of ɸ-Week (9-13 September) in ESA-ESRIN are invited to booth no 9, where we present a new version of Jupyteo service.  Other interested persons can read the service description or contact the support and development team by sending an email to support@jupyteo.com.

We have implemented a new version of Fertisat that allows farmers to use the service more efficiently on tablets and smartphones as well as we have enriched application maps with a new file format: ISO-XML. The application is now responsive, which means that the appearance and layout of the pages smoothly adjust to the size of the browser window. FertiSat clearly presents field views and application maps on both large screens and small displays, which is important, since many farmers prefer to use the service on their mobile devices.

Moreover, we implemented the PWA technology (Progressive Web Application), thanks to which FertiSat works as a native mobile or a desktop application, i.e. offline or in a full-screen mode. The service can now be started by clicking the icon on a home screen, and the application can be added to the home screen from a browser level.

ISOBUS system is more and more widely used in modern agricultural machinery, as it enables communication between tractors and various types of machines. To fit in the trend of ISOBUS growing popularity among our clients, we have provided access to application maps compatible with that technology.

Prof. Włodzimierz Rączkowski (Institute of Archeology, University of Poznań) and Dominik Ruciński (Wasat) took an active part in the Cultural & Natural Heritage session at the Living Planet Symposium 2019 presenting a paper “Cooling down enthusiasm: potential vs. practice in application of EO techniques in archaeological research and heritage management – have lessons been learned?” The presentation was followed by a lively discussion on the use of optical and radar satellite remote sensing by archaeologists. The paper was based on the experience gained during implementation of research projects funded by the European Space Agency.

May 13-17, during the Living Planet Symposium taking place in Milan, we will present for the first time the full functionality of Jupyteo service. It is an IDE environment operating in the cloud and based on Jupyter Notebooks technology, which enables the user to access Earth Observation data sets and a number of functions needed for their processing, visualization and sharing. Participants of this event are invited to visit our booth (no 22), while other interested persons can read the service description or contact the development team by sending an email to support@jupyteo.com.

The Council of ICT Pomeranian Cluster decided to accept our company as a member of this dynamically operating partnership. Interizon is one of the so-called Key National Clusters: significant for the country’s economy with a high international competitiveness. Wasat Sp. z o.o. plans to cooperate in frame of the Cluster Interizon with other companies in the field of software development for processing and analysis of satellite data.

From March 15 to 17 we invite you to visit our booth (No. 30, Pavilion H) at AgroTech Fair of Agricultural Techniques in Kielce. To all interested visitors we will present how to use the on-line service FertiSat that provides maps of variable-rate fertilization created on the basis of satellite imagery. In the current season the service offers maps for precise nitrogen fertilization of cereal crops, which help to reduce costs of fertilization and to increase its efficiency.

Wasat became a signatory of the Agreement for Intelligent Specialization of Pomerania in the area of “Interactive technologies in an information-rich environment” developed by the regional authorities and representatives of the Pomeranian business. As part of this initiative, we will support use of satellite remote sensing in the region’s economy.

This summer we actively participate in research conferences, e.g.:

• in June, Daniel Zinkiewicz presented “The Idea of Integrated Development Environment for EO Data Processing” at the Baltic Geodetic Congress in Olsztyn, Poland;
• in July, Bartosz Buszke presented new trends in the use of satellite remote sensing in precision agriculture at the “Polish DIAS for Europe” conference in Warsaw;
• in September, Dominik Ruciński will deliver a presentation “Identification, documentation and monitoring of historic landscapes: new data, new challenges, old problems” at the Landscape Archaeology Conference in Newcastle, UK.

With support from the European Space Agency our experts analyze the technical, organizational and economic aspects of the use of satellite data in supporting optimal irrigation of field crops in Poland. In contrast to horticultural production, where irrigation is used on a large scale, most field crops here are not covered by such treatments. This is partly due to the lack of up-to-date and accurate information on anomalies related to the amount of rainfall in the spring and summer season and difficulties in calculating the optimal amount of water that should be provided to plants. Satellite data can contribute to filling this gap, hence to more effective irrigation, whose significance will grow due to the effects of climate change.

At the invitation of universities our specialists conduct lectures on satellite techniques a few times per year. On January 26, Bartosz Buszke and Dominik Ruciński presented the latest achievements in the field of satellite remote sensing and development perspectives of the Earth Observation industry to Space Technologies students at the Gdańsk University of Technology.

Wasat team participates in the key European conferences in 2017 on the developments in the Earth Observation sector, e.g. EO Science for Society, EO Open Science, Big Data from Space. At the latter one, organized by the European and French space agencies and the EU bodies, the new project being implemented by Wasat in cooperation with researchers from the University of Warmia and Mazury will be presented: JupyTEP IDE as a concept of integrated development environment for EO data cloud-based processing solutions.

By decision of the Board of the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (www.earsc.org) our company was accepted as a full member of the organisation. The mission of EARSC, headquartered in Brussels, is to foster the development of the European EO geo-information services industry.

We have started a new contract from the European Space Agency that is aimed at development and adaptation of solutions based on Jupyter Notebook for processing Earth Observation data in a cloud environment. The products will support developers of satellite data exploitation platforms and EO scientists in an efficient creation of data processing algorithms and in visualisation of information or services.

Two new scientific papers co-authored by Wasat staff were published recently. The papers present results of the project ArchEO (Archaeological application of Earth Observation techniques), which was financed by the European Space Agency and jointly realised by Wasat and Institute of Archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. One of its main objectives was to assess the usefulness of satellite imagery in archaeological applications in Central Europe.

• Changing scale: from site through landscape to taskscape within airborne remote sensing perspective by Mikołaj Kostyrko, Włodzimierz Rączkowski and Dominik Ruciński (Proc. SPIE 9688, Fourth International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of the Environment (RSCy2016).;
• Sherlock Holmes’ or Don Quixote‘s certainty? Interpretations of cropmarks on satellite imageries in archaeological investigation by Aleksandra Wilgocka, Włodzimierz Rączkowski, Mikołaj Kostyrko i Dominik Ruciński (Proc. SPIE 9688, Fourth International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of the Environment (RSCy2016).

We started to implement a contract from the European Space Agency within the project entitled “Earth Observation for South East Europe (EO4SEE)”. The project is jointly performed by an international consortium of seven companies and research institutions (http://pathfinder.terrasigna.com).

The objective of the project is to develop a technical infrastructure that would enable to store and process large amounts of satellite data and products relevant for the countries of South East Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria). Simultaneously, several services on different topics (use cases) will be implemented. Wasat is responsible for one of them: our experts will develop algorithms for automatic classification of cultural landscapes. The process will be based on analyses of satellite data available under the Copernicus program. The developed tool will be used mainly by experts on cultural heritage protection (employees in governmental institutions, researchers, archaeologists). Inventory of the current state of a landscape and detection of changes will enable the analyses of landscape and cultural context of heritage protection, and will facilitate an effective identification of threats and relevant countermeasures.

We launched today our new corporate website.