Demetria, the first artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered taste and quality intelligence SaaS startup for the coffee supply chain, has unveiled a working application that identifies the successful reproduction of high value coffee seedlings.
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Demetria has entered into a commercial agreement with beverage giant Nespresso to deploy its solution to help the coffee brand provide farmers with high-quality coffee plants.
Nespresso is continually working on new coffee varieties through the technique of grafting coffee tree seedlings. Thus far, Nespresso has relied on the experience of a few trained experts to examine seedlings to determine whether the grafting process was successful and the plant is viable.
Now Demetria has applied its handheld sensor technology and machine-learning models to help Nespresso's operational teams measure and classify grafted stems of specific coffee tree seedlings. During the pilot, Demetria's application was used to classify over 240,000 seedlings in a three-month period. These seedling have since been supplied to Nespresso's network of coffee farmers in Colombia.
This joint process is expected to will provide coffee farmers across Colombia with high-quality grafted plants.
"Demetria was able to understand, design, develop and deploy a solution to meet our needs in the field in a very tight timeframe," says Santiago Arango, Green Coffee Project Manager Nestlé Nespresso.
"This work is an introduction to our long term plans with Demetria. We are embarking on applying their pioneering technology to build a suite of applications that will allow our network of farmers to accurately measure and manage their post-harvest processes for the first time, in order to consistently produce optimal coffee quality," Arango said.
Demetria co-founder and CEO Felipe Ayerbe said, "Demetria leverages technological innovation to create shared value across the coffee supply chain with a particular emphasis on positively impacting the livelihoods for the crop's smallholders.
"We're delighted to be working with Nespresso at such an early stage in our company's growth and we hope this application is just one of many high value use cases we can provide, bringing a new level of efficiency to a critical stage of coffee production while minimizing the cost of failure for both the roaster and the farmer," Ayerbe added.
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