INTERNATIONAL: An Australian biotech start-up say their drones can combat deforestation by planting millions of trees a year from the air. And this is perfect to solve the problem of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest which hit its highest level in over 15 years. According to the latest data, some 13,235 square kilometres or 5110 square miles was lost during the 2020-21 period.
AirSeed Technology want to fight climate change and biodiversity loss by combining drone technology, artificial intelligence and their special seed pods, designed to be fired into the ground from the air.
According to CEO and Co-Founder of AirSeed Technologies, Andrew Walker, each drone can plant over 40,000 seed pods per day and they fly autonomously. In comparison to traditional methodologies, that's 25 times faster, but also 80 per cent cheaper.
The new technology can deliver thousands of seed pods to the ground every hour. It will tackle large scale restoration projects, but the niche really lies in the biotech, which is the support system for the seed once it's on the ground. It protects the seed from different types of combative elements of wildlife ingress, but also supports the seed once it germinates and really helps deliver all of those nutrients and mineral sources that it needs, along with some probiotics to really boost early-stage growth.
The AirSeed Technology will manufacture these seed pods in what it calls a mobile manufacturing plant. So, the solution has been designed with global scale and rapid response in mind.
The seeds are chosen for the terrain to be planted and the pods manufactured locally using waste biomass, providing a carbon rich coating that protects seeds from birds, insects and rodents.
The drones autonomously fly pre-programmed flight paths, planting a predefined pattern and recording each seeds' coordinates which allows the route to be surveyed later to assess the health of the trees.
AirSeed Technologies says it has already planted more than 50,000 trees in South Africa and Australia and aims to plant 100 million trees by 2024.
The United Nations Environment Programme says the world loses 7 million hectares of forest every year, an area the size of Portugal. It's calling for deforestation to be halved by 2025 and to stop net deforestation globally by 2030.
Several companies like AirSeed Technologies are now developing drone-based planting systems including another Australian start-up, Dendra and Oxford-based Biocarbon Engineering - all aiming to help fight deforestation with seed-dropping technology.
