Stichting Dienst Landbouwkundig Onderzoek (DLO)
Wageningen University and Research Center

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Frits K. van Evert (1962) is an agronomist with additional expertise in robotics and ICT. He is a native of The Netherlands and received an M.Sc. in Agronomy (1988) from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. His work on modeling crop growth and soil erosion led to a Ph.D. in Soils (1992) from Washington State University. After working at ICRISAT in Niger, and at the University of Minnesota in the USA, he joined (in 1998) Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands where he is still employed today. In Wageningen, Dr. Van Evert initially worked on simulation models of crops, livestock, and farming systems and participated in the European Union (EU) project SEAMLESS. More recently, he led the development of a robot to control broad-leaved dock, as well as the development of a smart sprayer to control broad-leaved weeds in soccer fields. Another line of investigation seeks to improve robot localization by making optimal use of information from cameras and laser scanners. In current work, Dr Van Evert aims to minimize the impact of agriculture on the environment. He uses satellite imagery, unmanned airplanes, and tractor-mounted sensors to measure crop reflectance and thus better estimate the amount of fertilizer needed by crops. Yield forecasts are an important element of fertilizer recommendations. Van Evert obtains yield forecasts by using data assimilation to combine remotely sensed data, local data, and simulation models. He participates in the EU project CATCH-C which analyses long-term experiments with the goal to understand trade-offs between productivity, soil quality and greenhouse gases emissions that result from farm management options. In the EU  project VALERIE, semantic web techniques are used to find documents that provide farmers with precise answers to their questions about nutrient management, weed control and other subjects. In the Horizon-2020 project ANTARES, Van Evert works with the University of Novi Sad in Serbia to create a European Center of Excellence in that city. Finally, Dr Van Evert collaborates with the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs in the development of methods to measure the sustainability of agricultural systems, with the goal of making recommendations to improve under-performing systems.