Moyo, a leading digital business consultancy based in South Africa, has partnered with Dell Technologies to introduce an autonomous drone that uses AI to detect potato leaf disease. This new solution developed using the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA and Precision AI-ready workstations can support South Africa’s agriculture sector with advanced crop health monitoring.

The Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is a pioneering solution that integrates Dell’s leading compute, storage, networking, workstations, and laptops, with NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure and NVIDIA Enterprise AI software, all underpinned by NVIDIA’s high-speed Spectrum-X Ethernet networking fabric.

Dell Technologies noted that there is a tremendous opportunity for AI to help solve some of our planet’s biggest challenges. Using AI to enhance agricultural surveillance allows for timely interventions, reducing losses and improving yield quality.

To this end, the drone, which was developed by Moyo, employs a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system, combining high-resolution image capture with AI-based leaf pattern analysis. The neural network is trained to identify early disease signs, such as fungal infections. This greatly enhancing the precision and depth of disease detection. 

Moyo used the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, which combines Dell and NVIDIA’s AI solutions, to integrate AI models and frameworks into its operations.  The technology it uses includes Dell Precision AI-ready workstations with the NVIDIA  accelerated computing  platform, which includes NVIDIA AI Enterprise software for the development and deployment of secure, production-grade generative AI applications. This, Moyo explained, enabled it to run GenAI testing and quickly turn applications into real world solutions. By driving model training as an efficient NVIDIA AI Workbench project, a final accuracy rate of 99.52% was achieved in two weeks.

Understandably, AI is a demanding technology, and well served by Dell Precision workstations, which are equipped with high-end Intel Xeon processors, super-speed memory, and NVIDIA RTX professional graphics. The Dell Precision Optimizer software tunes these components to deliver optimal performance for the applications used in crop monitoring. This setup allows large datasets to be processed, combined with managing complex algorithms running in the backend. This data processing and algorithm output is essential for analysing crop health and growth patterns.  

“For companies using AI, having a reliable partner and high-performance technology is crucial. Dell Technologies has been a leading player in the AI space, offering the industry’s broadest portfolio of solutions designed specifically for AI workloads. This expertise was crucial in creating the drone AI model and will continue to be as we create other AI-driven solutions that can support South Africa's agriculture sector,” said Philip Heydenrych, Director, Moyo.

“By leveraging the potential of AI and cutting-edge technologies, we are collaborating with our customers to foster innovation and drive positive impact for business, people and the planet. With Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, Moyo now have their own sandbox environment for GenAI experiments and Proof of Concept projects and can quickly turn applications into real world solutions,” concluded Chris Buchanan, Client Solutions Director, Dell Technologies South Africa.