Crop count research

Imagine if you could confidently forecast yield each season for drastically less time than it takes you now. Crop Count has the potential to give accurate yield forecasts of above 90% along with orchard variability maps calibrated for yield, fruit size and health.

For a number of years, the research team at the Applied Agricultural Remote Sensing Centre (AARSC) at the University of New England (UNE), has been evaluating the accuracies of remote sensing for yield forecasting in a number of horticulture tree crops, including avocado. Whilst this evaluation has included UAVs and on ground sensing, a methodology developed for satellite imagery has been determined to be the most effective at delivering consistently accurate measures of yield forecasting for avocado.

Currently, the AARSC, led by AARSC Director, Professor Andrew Robson, are undertaking a Horticulture Innovation funded project Implementation of precision agricultural solutions in Australian avocado productions systems.

One of the key outputs of this project is to deliver a minimal viable (MVP) product that will provide avocado growers with access to high resolution satellite imagery as well as the ability to calibrate the imagery for yield, fruit size and tree health. Enter MVP ‘Crop Count’, a prototype mobile application that has been developed to do just this.

“We’ve had the pleasure of working alongside a number of progressive growers throughout this project who have provided invaluable support, it’s been exciting to see the Crop Count methodology delivering consistent levels of accuracies for yield forecasts,” Professor Robson said.

Professor Robson commented that in order to establish support from growers it was important that they were provided with a basic understanding of the technology, as well as evidence that the approach could achieve positive results. It is not just about pushing a technology and hoping it works.

“Researchers can often get caught up in the technical side of explaining the madness behind their methodologies, and that can become a barrier to entry for growers’ engagement or their desire to adopt research outputs in their on-farm practices,” he said.

“This time around we wanted to do things differently and deliver a tool that could be easily used on farm for the benefit of the grower,” Professor Robson said.

To physically put their work into the hands of growers, AARSC teamed up with award winning, digital creative agency, Circul8, who specialise in bridging the gap between research and real life.

Circul8’s Head of Production Janine Googan was instrumental in bringing this research to life.

Dr Moshiur Rahman (AARSC) and Alanha Stokes (Circul8 Managing Director) in the field.

“Our job was to marry the complicated science stuff with a practical way for farmers to accurately tally their crop.” Ms Googan said.

“To bridge this gap we believe that good design is essential, we don’t mean just making something look good (although we like doing that too). Good design is a process and way of thinking that makes sure that you empathise with your user and understand how your product will work in the context of their lives.”

Circul8 and AARSC engaged with a number of growers, to better understand how growers might use and benefit from an app that could deliver accurate forecasts. The team discovered that whilst forecasts were important, understanding tree health and being able to better manage underperforming areas of a block would really provide value.

“Knowing how many avocados you are going to harvest is good, but knowing how to increase that harvest through better field management was even better,” Ms Googan said.

An additional consideration for the team was connectivity, the app needed to work across the farm with or without mobile reception.

“We also had to consider devices and connectivity which was an issue when out in the field at several locations. This meant that we had to build the app to work effectively offline with the ability to sync when users were back online,” Ms Googan said. What has resulted is Crop Count, a user friendly prototype that delivers calibrated satellite imagery along with valuable tree health and performance information into the palm of grower’s hands.

The next phase for Crop Count is to test and validate across additional farms and have the back end of the application completed for complete automation. Currently AARSC are in conversations with potential commercial partners globally to assist in the commercialisation of Crop Count.

More information

If you’d like to find out more about Crop Count or be involved in future AARSC trials, please contact the team via email: aarsc@une.edu.au.

Acknowledgement

Crop Count is part of Implementing precision agriculture solutions in Australian avocado production systems (AV18002) project, funded by Hort Innovation, using the avocado research and development levy, and contributions from the Australian Government.

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