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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/thermal-crop-canopy-sensing-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Agriculture & Crop SensingThermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patents: Where Filing Concentrates and Where It Doesn't
A data-backed look at thermal crop canopy sensing patents: who leads irrigation-guidance filings, how thin the field still is, and where the technology composition leaves white space for new entrants.
12
Published Records
EP
Leading Jurisdiction
11
Active Filers Ranked
2018
Peak Filing Year
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What thermal crop canopy sensing patents cover
Thermal crop canopy sensing patents describe methods and systems that infer crop water status, stress, or irrigation need from canopy temperature — typically captured by infrared or thermal-imaging sensors mounted on ground robots, irrigation infrastructure, or aerial platforms. The scope pulled here is narrow and precise: 12 published records classified under horticulture (A01G), radiation measurement (G01J), or computer vision (G06V), spanning 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off.
The core technical move in most of these filings is converting a canopy temperature reading into an actionable index — a simplified water-stress score, an irrigation trigger, or a growth-stage flag — rather than the sensor hardware itself. That framing matters for freedom-to-operate review: the contested ground is the temperature-to-decision logic, not the thermal camera.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 window in any trend chart understates real filing activity; treat the most recent one to two years as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing activity and technology composition, thermal crop canopy sensing
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 12-record dataset: filing activity by year, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry more than one classification, the subclass shares below sum to well over 100% of the record total — that is expected and not a data error.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filing opens at zero in 2017, spikes to a peak of 9 records in 2018, and tapers to a single record by 2026 (a partial year). This shape points to a concentrated filing event rather than a steadily building field — most of the activity in scope traces to one period and one applicant.
IPC subclass composition
A01G (horticulture and forestry) appears in 91.7% of the 12 records, confirming this is fundamentally a crop-management filing set. G06Q (business/data processing), B64U (drones) and G01N (material analysis) each sit near or under 17%, and A01B, A01C and B64C each appear in just one record — signalling narrow, largely unexplored adjacent claim space.
Shares are the percentage of the 12 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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The most-cited records in this field
Representative Filing
CN119880895A — Greenhouse strawberry canopy water-stress detection method and system
河北农业大学
A patrol robot mounted with a thermal-infrared sensor moves along a fixed rail inside a greenhouse, capturing canopy thermal images across the full growing area rather than single spot readings. A simplified water-stress index is computed from canopy temperature and sent to a client system, aiming to replace point or localized temperature sampling with continuous, large-area capture.Filed by Hebei Agricultural University, dated 2025-04-25 — illustrates the shift from handheld spot sensors toward rail-mounted, continuous canopy capture inside controlled environments.
Most-cited records, thermal crop canopy sensing
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200214231A1 | Methods and systems for irrigation guidance | 44 |
| 2 | WO2019008570A1 | Methods and systems for irrigation guidance | 25 |
| 3 | US11291172B2 | Methods and systems for irrigation guidance | 6 |
| 4 | AU2018297715A1 | Methods and systems for irrigation guidance | 2 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of being searchable longer; read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a measure of current technical importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (4 of 4 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the filing pattern tells a strategy team
Four figures from this dataset carry more weight than they might first appear to, because the field is small enough that each one materially changes where a new entrant should look.
Concentration at the top
10 of 12 records
held by the leading assignee
One applicant dominates the ranked field
The assignee ranking lists 11 companies, but the leader alone accounts for 10 records against a fifth-place and tenth-place count of just 1 each. Most of the irrigation-guidance citation activity in this corpus traces back to that same applicant's family.
Ranking is by record count, not family-adjusted share.
Peak filing year
9 records in 2018
single-year peak, 2017-2026
A spike, not a build-up
Filing went from zero in 2017 to nine in 2018, then fell away. That pattern is consistent with one applicant's filing programme landing in a short window rather than a technology attracting broad, sustained interest.
Most recent years are understated by publication lag.
Technology skew
91.7% in A01G
of the 12 records
Horticulture framing dominates, hardware framing doesn't
Almost every record sits in A01G (horticulture/forestry), while drone-mounted capture (B64U, 16.7%) and image-based computer vision (G06V is part of scope but not separately broken out here) remain thin. The claim space is built around agronomic decision logic, not the imaging platform.
Subclass shares sum above 100% because records carry multiple classes.
Geographic filing spread
3 EPO filings
vs. 2 each in India, US, China
Filing is split across small pockets, not centred on one office
Receiving offices show Europe (EPO) with 3, India and the United States with 2 each, and single filings in Austria, Australia and China. No single jurisdiction holds a majority of the filings in scope.
Counts reflect receiving office, not applicant nationality.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thermal crop canopy sensing patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Where To Go From Here
Turning this landscape into a filing decision
The dataset points to specific next questions rather than a single verdict. Each of these is a narrower research task than re-reading the whole corpus.
Check freedom-to-operate against the irrigation-guidance family
The most-cited records in this set all trace to one irrigation-guidance family. Any new filing on canopy-temperature-to-irrigation-decision logic should be checked against that family's claim scope before drafting.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaMap the under-claimed drone and analytics adjacencies
B64U (drones) and G06Q (data processing) each sit under 20% of records despite being natural extensions of ground-based thermal sensing. That gap is where a differentiated claim is easier to defend.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the Hebei-cluster filings as a group, not individually
Several single-filing entrants in this set share co-assignee links to the same regional agricultural-machinery institutes. Watching that cluster together surfaces coordinated filing activity that looking at any one applicant would miss.
Build a watch list in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about thermal crop canopy sensing patents
This dataset identifies 12 published records classified under horticulture, radiation measurement, or computer vision IPC codes, filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off. That is a small, tightly scoped field rather than a broad one — the search string used deliberately narrows to canopy-thermal sensing methods rather than thermal imaging generally. Anyone comparing this figure to a different search should check the IPC codes and keyword scope first, since small changes to either can shift the count substantially.
The assignee ranking returned by this dataset lists 11 companies, with one applicant holding 10 of the 12 records in scope and the remaining ranked entrants each holding a small number of filings, down to single filings at fifth and tenth place. The bulk of the most-cited records — all describing irrigation-guidance methods and systems — trace to that same leading applicant. This is a concentrated field at the top with a long tail of single-filing entrants below it, several of them regional Chinese agricultural-machinery institutes.
Almost all records (91.7% of the 12 in scope) sit under A01G, the horticulture and forestry classification, confirming the field is framed around crop management rather than sensor hardware. Smaller shares touch drone platforms (B64U, 16.7%), material analysis (G01N, 16.7%), and control systems (G05B, 16.7%), with soil working, planting, and fixed-wing aircraft each appearing in just one record. Because a single filing can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total — that overlap is expected.
Growth is not calculable from this dataset in a reliable way: filing activity peaked at 9 records in 2018 and has not returned to that level since, and there are fewer than four complete years of data once the roughly 18-month publication lag is accounted for. The pattern looks more like a concentrated filing event around one applicant's programme than a steadily building technology trend. Readers should treat the most recent one to two years in any trend chart as understated rather than as evidence of decline.
The clearest gaps sit in the branches adjacent to the dominant A01G horticulture framing: drone-mounted capture (B64U, 16.7% of records), business/data-processing integration (G06Q, 25%), and standalone material analysis (G01N, 16.7%) are all present but thin relative to the core horticulture claims. Soil-working (A01B), planting (A01C), and fixed-wing aircraft (B64C) integration each appear in only a single record, suggesting those combinations have barely been claimed. A first mover combining thermal canopy sensing with one of these thinner branches would be filing into comparatively open claim space.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Thermal Crop Canopy Sensing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.