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Literal® is Hiphen’s portable phenotyping tool for high-resolution plant imaging in the field, ideal for cocoa. Easy to use, it captures pod counts, flowers, diseases, and height.
About
Field phenotyping remains one of the biggest bottlenecks in crop improvement due to its manual, labor-intensive, and inconsistent nature—especially in challenging environments like cocoa fields. Most available technologies either provide only hardware or only software, require controlled environments, or are not adapted to tropical crops. Literal is unique as a fully integrated, crop-agnostic field phenotyping platform that combines ground-based imaging, AI-powered trait extraction, and automated data processing into one seamless workflow. Unlike fragmented or niche solutions, Literal is designed for real-world field conditions, including uneven terrain, varying canopy structures, and tropical weather. Its plug-and-play setup empowers field technicians to capture high-quality phenotypic data with minimal training, while its flexible architecture allows quick adaptation to new crops or traits, such as pod number, disease severity, or canopy vigor in cocoa. Data is delivered in clean spreadsheet format, eliminating manual processing and speeding up decision cycles. With successful deployments across multiple crops and environments, Literal directly addresses the industry's need for accurate, repeatable, and cost-effective field data—bringing the power of high-throughput phenotyping to the field.
Key Benefits
1. Literal dramatically accelerates phenotyping, enabling rapid data collection across entire cocoa trials in minutes instead of days.
2. It captures high-resolution images that allow scoring of individual trees with precision, even in dense or uneven field conditions.
3. From a single scan, Literal extracts multiple traits simultaneously, such as canopy vigor, pod count, and disease symptoms.
4. This reduces labor costs and eliminates subjective errors common in manual scoring.
5. The platform delivers clean, standardized spreadsheets as output, ready for immediate analysis by breeding or agronomy teams.
6. Literal is easy to operate in the field by technicians with minimal training, ensuring scalability
7. Literal helps make faster, data-driven decisions, boosting breeding efficiency and improving cocoa productivity.
Applications
Literal is designed for organizations involved in field-based crop research, breeding, and agronomy, with a focus on complex or high-value crops grown in diverse environments. The primary target market includes:
- Global food and agriculture companies conducting in-house research and development to improve crop varieties and production systems.
- Breeding programs and agricultural R&D centers focused on accelerating genetic gains, improving disease resistance, and selecting for yield under real-world field conditions.
- NGOs and development agencies running productivity and sustainability programs in cocoa-producing countries.
- Academic institutions and research consortia conducting field phenotyping trials in forestry, agroecology, and climate-resilient agriculture.
- Agri-tech providers and digital farming companies seeking to enrich their platforms with scalable field trait data.