oskar marko - donausoja · oskar marko . about biosense •r&d institute for it in biosystems...

Experiences from using big datasets in the

American Midwest to optimise variety selection

and soybean yield prediction

Oskar Marko

ABOUT BIOSENSE

•R&D institute for IT in biosystems

•Serbia – leader in production of non-GMO soybean

•70 permanent staff

•Diversified income

•24 ongoing H2020 projects

•No 1 in Eastern Europe

ABOUT BIOSENSE

•Antares: €28M, 7 years

•European CoE for Advanced Technologies in Sustainable Agriculture

•People, equipment, accelerator, Sentinel data hub…

2017 WINNERS

FAO: +70% by 2050

Increasing the yield not a problem, but comes at a price

Sustainability

Seed selection is the most efficient way of increasing the yield

AGRICULTURAL CHALLENGES

PROBLEM STATEMENT

•>100,000 samples

•5/180 seed varieties

•Maximise yield

•Minimise risk

WEIGHTED HISTOGRAMS REGRESSION (WHR)

•System determinative

•Training Dataset: F1-F5

•Evaluation Farm: FE

•Voting

•Votes weighted by similarity

WEIGHTED HISTOGRAMS

PDF of yield at Evaluation Farm for each feature

DEFINING SIMILARITY

Similarity of individual features

COMPARISON OF REGRESSION ALGORITHMS

[bu/ac]

PORTFOLIO OPTIMISATION

•Objective 1: high yield

•Objective 2: stable yield

•Trade-off

•Tools from economics

•Portfolio optimisation

SEED SELECTION

PORTFOLIO OPTIMISATION IN FOLKLORE

•GER: Man kann nicht auf zwei Hochzeiten tanzen One can’t dance at two weddings

•YU: Ne možeš imati i jare i pare You can't have both the goatling and the money

•ITA: Volere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca To want the barrel full and the wife drunk

•FRA: Vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre (et le sourire de la crémière) To want the butter and the money from the butter (and a smile from the shopkeeper)

•ENG: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket


•Harry Markowitz (1952) – Nobel prize (1990)

•Diversification of investments

•Investments = soybean varieties

•Return = yield

•Source of risk?



•Predicted yields for the next year

•Covariance matrix



Efficient frontier


RESULTS

•Is 5% good enough?

•Average person consumes 1.46 bu/yr

•The US could feed a country the size of Mexico

SYNGENTA SERBIA

“Wrong choice of seeds cannot be compensated later in season“

Additional investment ≈ 0

CROP CHALLENGE 2017

•Farmer’s point of view -> retailers’ point of view

•Right amount of supplies

•Too much – dead stocks

•Too little – missed opportunity

•Minimise transport costs

FEATURE IMPORTANCE

Midwest climate analysis

Weather in the top 5

WEATHER SCENARIOS

•Climate

•15 historical weather instances from Region dataset

•1 WS = solar radiance, temperature, precipitation in 1 year

•Assumptions:

•1. No other weather scenarios

•2. All weather scenarios equally probable


Pareto optimal portfolios (blue)

Farmer’s risk profile defined by PI

High PI = ready to take risks

Low PI = not ready to take risks

RESULTS

Strategy Risk Improvement

Choose the best variety for all subregions (benchmark)

7.52 6.72%

Portfolio optimisation based on local PI

7.60 7.91%

Portfolio optimisation based on globally optimal PI (18.25)

7.96 9.53%

Assumptions that farmers will actually buy the optimal seeds

SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION

FUTURE WORK

Thank you for your attention!

Oskar Marko

oskar marko - donausoja · oskar marko . about biosense •r&d institute for it in biosystems...

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