Fredericton-based Picketa Systems, maker of the LENS hardware and software suite for analyzing plant tissues, is expanding the system’s capabilities to include analysis for corn crops, in addition to its original focus on potatoes.

The upgrade will launch this spring as part of what Picketa described in a statement as a broader effort to expand the LENS’s capabilities and grow its market, following the rollout of its early adopter program earlier this year. The company is also conducting trials in South Africa and Chile this winter and plans to soon add analysis for canola and onion crops to the LENS feature set.

The LENS itself is powered by an optical sensor used to scan leaf samples and a cloud-based machine-learning engine used to interpret the data gathered by the sensor. It then offers users advice about what care crops need and when.

“In its third year of development, the LENS responds to challenges faced by agronomists with timely and accurate data on nutrient uptake, assisting in managing input and fertilizer costs, and adapting to varying crop conditions,” said Picketa in a statement.

“The tool, now commercially available, aims to tackle these issues, improving the information that agronomists have on-hand during key moments of the season.”

In 2023, Picketa field-tested nine LENS units, which the company estimates collectively saved farmers a little over $59,000 in expenses like fertilizer and fuel.

Feedback from the testers was positive, with one describing the LENS’s analysis capabilities as “a lie detector for plants” because it gives the user a way to verify other sources of information.

The success builds on a $1.4 million capital raise by Picketa earlier this year, with lead investor the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation. The other investors included Calgary-based agtech venture capital funds Tall Grass Ventures and Koan Capital, and Montreal’s Desjardins Group, which is the largest federation of credit unions in North America and has a sizeable business providing services to the agricultural sector. Members of two angel groups, Mariner Partners’ East Valley Ventures and Alberta-based Startup TNT, also invested.

Picketa has 12 employees listed on LinkedIn, and CEO Xavier Hébert-Couturier has said previously he plans to grow the team soon.