GrainSense Ltd

In grain farming, timing is everything. In order to know when to harvest, store, select for feed or sell – and at what price – you have to know the quality of your crops at that specific moment. In 2014, the VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland ran a project to transform traditional, bulky Near-Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy lab equipment into a convenient handheld format. The project’s key innovation was the use of an integrating sphere combined with absorbance spectroscopy, as well as the development of a low-noise and low-power consumption NIR photo detector for ambient temperatures. Scandinavian agriculture influencers understood that the technology could answer the urgent need for a solution to help grain sector businesses track grain quality. At the end of 2014, as a spin-off of VTT, GrainSense was born.