Netherlands: Croptimal Brings a €95,000 Tractor-Mounted Virus-Detection Robot to Smaller Seed-Potato Growers
The Croptiscan 3000 scans a 3-metre strip of seed-potato crop at about 1.5 hectares an hour for PVY and leafroll, at roughly half the price of the company's self-driving machine of the same width.
Dutch agtech company Croptimal has launched the Croptiscan 3000, a tractor-mounted version of its AI-based selection robot aimed at smaller seed-potato growers, the Dutch farm titles Nieuwe Oogst and Boerderij reported on 17 and 19 September.
The machine is carried on a tractor and covers a working width of 3 metres. It travels at about 5 km/h, which Nieuwe Oogst translates into roughly 1.5 hectares per hour, or about 12 hectares in a working day. A camera above each row looks for plants infected with potato virus Y (PVY) and leafroll virus, the two infections that most often decide whether a seed lot passes inspection. A shield blocks out ambient light, so the system can operate in bright sunshine and after dark.
The list price is €95,000, plus €4,000 a year for service, support and algorithm updates. Boerderij reports that Croptimal’s self-driving robot of the same width costs €175,000; the self-driving range is built in 4-, 8- and 12-row versions, covering 3, 6 and 9 metres. According to the company, the detection model was trained on data from seven operational Croptiscan machines and twelve separate camera arms.
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Two further claims — that the system flags infection before symptoms are visible, and that it pays for itself in three to five years — appear only in the company’s English-language release and have not been independently tested. Neither Dutch article reports field accuracy figures.
potatoes.news first covered Croptimal’s self-driving selection robot in July (read the earlier report). The new model does not change the detection principle; it changes the carrier. Instead of a dedicated autonomous vehicle, growers mount the camera frame on a tractor they already own, which is how the company brings the entry price down.
In seed-potato production, virus selection is still largely done by people walking the rows and removing diseased plants before inspectors arrive. The work is seasonal, repetitive and depends on trained eyes. Both Dutch reports frame the tractor-mounted scanner as a way to bring machine selection to seed farms that are too small to justify a self-driving robot.
Why it matters
Virus levels decide the class — and the price — of a seed lot. A lower entry price could move camera-based selection from large specialist farms into mid-size seed businesses. What is still missing is independent data on how many infected plants the system finds and misses compared with experienced human selectors.
Photo: A sprayer in a potato field in the Netherlands, not Croptimal equipment (illustrative). JanvdF / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
