Technology optimises crops

Trial Drives Farming Decisions

New tree scanning technology trialled this year in Australian prune crops is helping growers produce a more uniform crop of larger sized fruit.

The trial using Green Atlas Cartographer has been funded through the AgriFutures Australia Producer Technology Uptake Program, which supports eligible producer groups in their efforts to increase adoption of technology solutions on-farm.

The aim of the trial was to demonstrate fruit scanning technology to Australian prune growers to help improve their commercial viability.

Australian Prune Industry Association deputy chairman Michael Zalunardo was keen to be part of the trial, which included five growers in the Griffith region.

“Knowing how much to thin trees is always a challenge,” he said.

“If you choose not to thin, you run the risk of producing a large crop of small fruit and there’s simply no money in that.

“Alternatively, if you thin too hard, the prunes will be bigger, but there’s not enough of it.”

Clear picture of crops

Green Atlas’ technology caters to the needs of every tree, according to Green Atlas co-founder Steve Scheding.

The scanning equipment identifies all flowers and fruits in an orchard at all stages of the fruit life cycle.

The maps generated show fruit count, size and colour and canopy vigour enabling precision management decisions about individual trees to increase production and reduce operating costs over the entire orchard.

“By optimising in-field labour, use of sprays and other inputs and logistics, a grower’s bottom line is improved. At the other end, revenue is improved with more fruit of a higher quality and consistency and a higher degree of certainty for marketing activities,” Steve said.

Growers participating in the trial selected the patches to be scanned with the Cartographer in conjunction with Steve.

Unfortunately, unseasonal heavy rain meant that one grower’s patches were not able to be accessed and scanned, while the remaining five growers had their property scanned in late October to early November 2022.

To ensure that the data was correctly calibrated, “ground-truth” physical counts were completed at the same time as the scanning.

“It’s important to ensure that what the technology sees is the same as what is actually present in the trees, and our ground-truth counts help us to build appropriate image processing models for each of the different crops that we operate in,” he said.

The information is processed into fruit distribution maps and a report to assist the grower decide on tree-shaking (fruit thinning) requirements and forward yield estimates on post-thinned blocks.

Technology trial yields results

Michael had two scanning runs conducted at his property, one prethinning and the other, four weeks after thinning, to see the effects.