Gesa: KWS robot for the germination

Cutting-edge technology for high-speed automatic analysis to guarantee the highest quality of sugar beet seeds

Editor's note: This article was originally published in Italian. This English summary has been prepared with Google Translate and edited for clarity.

The mission of KWS is to offer farmers of excellent quality. To achieve this goal, KWS invests in innovative technologies to test the seed.

Among these there is a highly specialized robot , called Gesa , tailored to meet the needs of our experts. The robot is able to test the speed with which beet seeds germinate , combining high speed with great accuracy. This allows KWS to give the farmer only high quality products.

Gesa: germination speed analyzer

Rapid germination, after the seeding of beet, is one of the most important qualitative characteristics to guarantee a good investment.

KWS has always conducted analysis on germinability and seed quality. Since Gesa started its work in KWS, the previous manual test has been improved and standardized by this highly technological robot. Gesa was developed specifically for KWS and has been used since December 2016 in the quality seed laboratory at Einbeck in Germany, the KWS headquarters, where the production facilities are located.

KWS has invested € 1.5 million in the fully automated robot-assisted image analysis system.
Consists of:

• a shelf with air conditioning
• a robot that moves the germination trays
• two cameras that take pictures

The germination of the beet seed in the trays is stimulated by conditions of humidity of the air and controlled temperature for several days and the photos are taken at defined time intervals.

In a day, about 27 thousand seeds can be analyzed in the period of maximum production that goes from October to March.

The germination tests allow to have a high level of homogeneity in the emergency in the field

After the analysis of the images, various key indicators for germination are determined. Lots of seeds with the same germination speed can be grouped together in order to guarantee a high degree of homogeneity in the field emergency.

Gesa, together with other innovative technologies to test seeds (such as computerized tomography to evaluate the quality of the seeds) allow KWS to provide the farmer with only high quality products.