This page describes a trial or pilot design. The figures below are illustrative design targets — not yet measured field results. Verified numbers will replace them as deployments complete.
9 days
earlier detection vs. visual scouting
41%
reduction in blanket-spray passes
100%
canopy coverage per scan cycle
~3 hrs
from flight to row-level advisory
The Challenge
The problem on the ground
Downy mildew is the single largest threat to Nashik's grape economy. Once canopy symptoms become visible to the human eye, growers face an impossible choice: blanket-spray the entire vineyard and risk residue limits on export-bound fruit, or delay and accept bunch losses that can exceed a quarter of the harvest.
The trial design centres on a 12-acre estate near Dindori that relies on weekly manual scouting across 9,000 vines. Scouting covers only a fraction of the canopy, and in recent seasons infections have been known to spread for over a week before first detection.
Our Approach
What we deployed
The protocol pairs AnaVruksha's Farm Doctor crop-intelligence stack with a weekly drone-scanning schedule. Multispectral imagery captures canopy reflectance signatures associated with early infection stress, and on-farm edge processing scores every vine row for anomaly within hours of each flight.
When anomaly scores cross the alert threshold, agronomists receive row-level maps pinpointing suspected infection pockets, with plain-language advisories delivered through the Farmer Companion app. Suspected zones are then verified by targeted manual inspection before any spray decision.
Technology Used