Lindsay Corporation has agreed to acquire a 49.9 percent minority interest in Austria-based Pessl Instruments GmbH, with an option to acquire the remainder of the company at a later date.

Pessl is a provider of agricultural technology solutions under the METOS brand, and offers IoT hardware and software tools for informed decision-making, including field monitoring systems with a wide array of agronomic data points that inform Lindsay’s FieldNET remote irrigation management platform.

This investment by Lindsay comes less than a year after the two companies had initially entered into a strategic partnership, announced in May of 2023, to leverage the combined expertise of both companies and expand value enhancement to growers.

Pessl has more than 80,000 connected in-field data collection devices globally, with 50,000 active customers using its FieldClimate online interface. These connected devices include weather stations, soil moisture probes, insect monitoring traps, crop monitoring cameras, soil and nutrient sampling, machine and asset trackers, and other sensors providing real-time data on key agronomic health indicators. Coupled with Lindsay’s FieldNET Advisor platform, which synthesizes millions of data points to make custom recommendations to growers for precise, efficient water application, METOS and FieldNET provide a solution in the utilization of artificial intelligence in agriculture.

“This investment broadens and strengthens our existing partnership with Pessl, accelerating innovations in water management, increasing our global reach, and providing new solutions needed to conserve natural resources and expand our world’s potential,” said Randy Wood, president and CEO of Lindsay.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2024, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.