U.K. company aims to turn scent into farm warning signal

Digital Odour Technologies aims to turn scent into an early-warning signal for agriculture.

The U.K.-based company, also known as DOT, is developing odour-analysis technology and operates alongside Arctech Innovation, its scientific services arm.

The technology is intended to detect biological risks by reading chemical signals in the air.

Why it Matters: Early detection tools could help farmers spot pest, disease or stored-grain problems before losses are visible, but their value will depend on whether they can perform reliably in real farm conditions.

DOT is one of 15 companies in a Conexus-backed ag-tech accelerator that wraps up at Ag in Motion, near Langham, Sask., July 21-23.

Follow all our Ag in Motion coverage here.

The company’s work is rooted in chemical ecology, the study of how living organisms use scent signals. Plants, insects and animals release volatile organic compounds, or airborne chemical signatures, that carry information about biological activity, health or stress.

DOT uses those signals to identify the presence of pests and other biological risks.

Its first commercial product is aimed at bedbug detection. That system includes a monitoring trap and a digital sensing system designed to detect molecules emitted by bedbugs and send alerts to an online platform.

The question now is whether the same approach can pass the smell test in agriculture.

To that end, in January, the company established a base at Rothamsted, a major agricultural research centre in the United Kingdom. There, DOT intends to expand its odour-based detection work into crop pests, pathogens and plant stress.

“Being based here allows us to expand our services in odour-based detection, efficacy testing and validation, and to collaborate directly with leaders in sustainable farming and crop protection innovation,” James Logan, chief executive of Arctech Innovation, said in a release about the Rothamsted base.

DOT says its plant-health work aims to develop sensing tools that can identify problems before damage shows.

Pests and pathogens can build before they are easy to see. In stored grain, for example, insect activity or spoilage can reduce quality and create management problems before an issue is obvious from outside the bin.

The technology is part of a broader movement toward remote and earlier detection tools in agriculture. Some systems look for airborne spores, some use cameras or crop imagery and others, such as DOT’s, focus on chemical signals in the air.

For Canadian farmers, the value would depend on how the technology performs in practical farm settings, including fields, storage facilities and other agricultural environments.