The virtual March 28-30 conference assembled researchers from a variety of disciplines who develop, use and review new technologies to improve the sustainability of crop production and breeding.

Precision agriculture uses intelligent automation to help farmers enhance crop production sustainably while reducing labor costs and inputs. Grower adoption, however, has remained slow and isn’t widespread, said Chandra Krintz, professor of computer science at University of California (UC) Santa Barbara and chief scientist and co-founder of AppScale Systems Inc.

While some large-scale industrial farming operations have begun to integrate AI and machine learning into their operations, many smaller operations haven’t. Existing solutions collect data using on-farm sensors, but move the data to the cloud for processing by different vendors and platforms. Because numerous vendors make the sensors, such services don’t work. The solutions and platforms don’t communicate with each other and are incompatible, Krintz said.

Connecting growers

SmartFarm is an open-source computing system designed to provide farmers precision agriculture solutions. Krintz discussed how SmartFarm combines data from a variety of sensors, integrates recent advances in data analytics, machine learning and user interfaces that are compatible with systems available from public clouds. It eliminates the need for an IT staff to maintain the system.

“Many farmers have costly or poor internet connectivity, making those other solutions impossible to use,” she said. “Since intelligent automation needs to happen on-farm, moving the data to the cloud and back, it only causes delays and costs, while requiring farmers to share or give up ownership of their data.”

SmartFarm moves the cloud to the farm. In the familiar app store model, growers can download apps via edge cloud computer systems, which are low-cost and self-managing computing appliances.

SmartFarm systems are being investigated for use in different precision ag applications, including farm zone identification. The app identifies zones and reports them to growers for optimized management of those regions. In microclimate sensing for precision frost protection, physical modeling and sensor data can help predict the onset and duration of freezes, allowing growers to use the data to automatically control wind machines for air mixing or irrigation to warm the air and protect their plants against frost damage.

Root farming robotics

Robots are being deployed in central Europe to help sweet potato and seed potato growers counter labor shortages and costs. Alexander Langer, an industrial engineer and co-founder of Schmiede, a German firm that creates business models and robotic systems for construction and agriculture industries, discussed robotic automation in root crop farming.

In its second generation, Schmiede’s fully autonomous Harvey One uses stereo cameras mounted on the front of the machine as well as the intake belt to monitor crop row profiles and soil volume. Because every extra kilogram of soil growers must dig and work through affects fuel efficiencies, such monitoring is vital, Langer said.

The machines are being prepared for assisted harvesting, including automated weeding work. Langer said he’s working to produce the machinery in mass volume to lower costs and allow more grower adoption.

“What does the future of farming look like?” he said. “I don’t quite know, but the premise thus far has always been pushing economies of scale by creating bigger machinery, controlling your fleets through intelligent software, planning (and) analyzing to crank out that last bit of improvement. That may be viable for large-scale farming, but not for niches.”

Berry vision

A highly practical AI agricultural application involves building vision systems that can precisely recognize individual healthy plants, allowing growers to target treatments without damaging other normal instances.

Taeyeong Choi, a postdoctoral research associate in the Lincoln Agri-Robotics Centre at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom, studies AI computer vision and robotics for augmented intelligence in agriculture.

He discussed a system that collected 3,500 images of strawberries from his university using a mobile robot with a camera. The robot is being trained to detect normal and anomalous strawberries visually.

The research, however, showed that damaged fruit images were rare compared to normal fruit and that the robot would need to be better trained. Choi turned to Google Brain scientists, who solved a similar issue.

“What we expect of these agricultural robots is the capability of modeling the environment of the field precisely,” Choi said. “In this indoor strawberry farm, you can imagine using a mobile robot that can monitor qualities of individual berries using visual sensors. If the human farmers can learn from the robot which strawberries are unhealthy or damaged, they can perform special treatments and get a more accurate estimation.”

AI berries

Other research involves real-time fruit monitoring and examining through a mobile robotics platform for strawberry inspection and harvesting within precision indoor farming systems (PIFS). A mobile robotics platform (MRP) is being developed to provide indoor farming operations the ability to monitor individual strawberry plants’ growing status and harvest ripe strawberries non-destructively.

The research, from Guoqiang Ren, a doctorate candidate in the Zhejiang University/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute, saw an average 88% success rate. The research showed small fruit performed better than berries with elongated angles or enlarged body widths. “MPR has the ability to inspect and harvest strawberries within PIFS,” Ren said. “It can work smarter.”

The University of California and UC Cooperative Extension partnered with Digicrop 2022, which was organized by the University of Bonn, the German Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob – Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production” and the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems. Numerous presentations also covered crop breeding of grains and other commodities and digital and AI technologies to improve crop nutritional quality and abiotic stress tolerance.

– Doug Ohlemeier, assistant editor

Photo at top: Digicrop 2022 was a scientific event that targeted an audience working at the intersection of engineering, robotics, computer science, crop sciences, agricultural sciences, phenotyping and economics. Photo courtesy of Digicrop 2022.

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Boyer is the second-generation owner of Ridgetop Orchards, a grower-packer- shipper in Fishertown, Pennsylvania.

One of the mechanisms Boyer has explored on his farm is FruitScout, a precision crop load management app used on a smartphone to track buds that turn to blooms, and on through fruitlets to full-color fruit at harvest – all in an effort to pinpoint the economically optimum crop load goal.

Boyer made a presentation on his use of FruitScout, along with Penn State University Professor of Horticulture Rich Marini, at this year’s Mid-Atlantic Fruit & Vegetable Convention in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

“We have 10 different varieties of apples, all biennial bearing (which has trees that have an irregular crop load from year to year),” Boyer said. “Biennial bearing is a real problem, especially when you start growing Honeycrisp, which is our No. 1 variety at 104 acres, 84 of that in production, with 20 more coming into production. All of our apples, except for Fuji, have a parentage of Honeycrisp, which can be not so fun.”

Escalating labor costs and availability are among other reasons growers like Boyer are seeking technological solutions.

He said he was intrigued by FruitScout, “a smartphone or android system where you go out and take pictures of your trees. Within that, the idea is you’re trying to maintain the optimum crop load.”

Boyer noted that on FruitScout’s website, “it says their product has the potential to deliver between $5,000 and $10,000 per acre in increased productivity, and that 1,000 trees per acre results in additional potential income of $1 to $3 per tree.”

Ridgetop Orchards used FruitScout in an attempt to monitor fruit sizing, bud counts, counts at bloom, fruit counting, tracking the growth model and sizing.

“We took photos of a handful of trees to see how well we could get them to size,” Boyer said. “There were some (FruitScout) functions we just couldn’t use,” Boyer said. “During the thinning window, there was a little bit of lag time. The company was new, and is building staff and resources and stuff like that.

“We’ve never been successful at tracking fruitlet size because, realistically, at the end of the day in Pennsylvania you have about two windows,” Boyer said. “You’ve got one at about nine or 10 millimeters, and you have one other window after that. You are either going to thin, or you’re not going to thin. I don’t know how we overcome that. We have to be able to track fruit, I understand that. But it is a tough task. By the time that you can see fruit, basically it stops growing and it’s not going to stick around and you already have to make your decision about whether you’re going to hit it a second time.

“Applications for thinning measure fruitlets after the first round of chemical thinning and every three to seven days,” Boyer said. “We apply thinner at nine to 12 days, weather permitting, and then hopefully catch a second window later. It’s the same problem with some other models. You have one or two good windows.”

Boyer said it is essential to “get information back in real time. The (FruitScout) information was so slow (coming) back. It doesn’t save time.

“I do believe that the system will probably work better on a two-dimensional-type tree. You put this on a bigger tree, I think the harder time you’re going to have counting the fruit that’s on the tree’s back side,” Boyer said.

“There’s maybe some confusion with FruitScout and me on whether or not you can take pictures at this stage and get an accurate count. Apparently, FruitScout is saying that you can take pictures before you hand-thin, and take pictures after you hand-thin, and it will tell you how many pieces of fruit are left behind.

“Secondly, where I was hoping we could go somewhere in the future with FruitScout is preharvest photos of fruit on a tree where you can get a pre-sizer. So, whenever you go to a block you know what you’re peaking on for the packing houses so you can send in trays or bags, you know what blocks you can go to and keep those records.

“FruitScout has been really willing to work with us. That’s been great. It’s been an adventure to do this. With every type of new technology that comes out there’s a learning curve and difficulties.”

A researcher’s evaluation

Penn State’s Marini visited Boyer’s orchard to conduct an evaluation of FruitScout technology for predicting Honeycrisp blossom cluster and fruit set.

“I’ve been working on trying to predict by taking measurements of average fruit size, mostly on the research side, for 30-35 years,” Marini told the Mid-Atlantic event’s audience. “I was interested in working with Mark to see how much this system actually estimates the real thing.”

Marini’s methods included working with 15 Honeycrisp and 15 Fuji trees, each within one row. Boyer had taken photos of trunks and trees in bloom to estimated apple trunk cross-sectional area and bloom density.

“I was there a little bit after petal fall,” Marini said. “It wasn’t quite time to thin yet, but I counted the fruit clusters that had fruit on each tree. I did that about 10 days after bloom using a tape measure.”

“It was several thousand fruit, so it took me a few days,” Marini said. “I wanted to know if measuring 10 fruit per tree with the photo would do a good job in estimating the value. I used various statistical and graphical techniques to compare estimated values with observed values. “Mark and I had measured the same 15 trees.”

Marini said, “FruitScout did a pretty good job of measuring trunk size. I was quite surprised. But, in analyzing the data sets, I had never seen a situation where you have two means that are so close together and we’re correlated. I don’t get that.”

“I did same type of thing for the cluster counts. FruitScout measured one side of the tree. I did both sides. I expected my cluster counts to be higher, and they were a lot higher. It was due to some of the cross sections hiding the clusters by looking at it on just one side. The estimated (FruitScout) values were significantly less than the values that I counted. They didn’t correlate that well.

“Since then, we’ve learned that probably wasn’t the appropriate way to look at it,” Marini said. “The way we would do it is not the way FruitScout would do it. We did not know that FruitScout adjusts cluster values for occlusion, using photos before bloom, at bloom and after bloom. Therefore, we could not evaluate how well FruitScout estimated cluster counts or cluster density. The way I did it was probably not a fair comparison.”

Marini measured fruit size on Honeycrisp, using the same 15 trees, 10 fruit per tree.

“FruitScout overestimated average fruit diameter,” Marini said. “In fact, it underestimated size of the big fruit and overestimated the size of the small fruit. There’s a problem here. It’s not estimated fruit size the way I would expect. We saw the same type of things for Fuji. The estimates are bigger than the diameter. We would conclude that the diameters (comparisons) are different.

“FruitScout underestimated the size of the big fruit, and overestimated the size of the small fruit,” Marini said. “The distribution measurement was different from a statistical point of view.”

Marini said FruitScout was effective in measuring the trunk cross-sectional area (TCSA), but “tended to overestimate the fruit diameter. There are a couple of reasons. Fruit are not symmetrical. Especially Fuji, it can be sort of oblique.

“It’s also important to get a sampling of fruit that truly represents the population on the tree,” Marini said.” I’ve tried this a lot of different ways over the last 30 years. You basically have to sample 25% of the tree to get a good estimate. Mark only looked at7%to9%ofthetree,andIthinkthatis part of the problem.”

“FruitScout is an evolving machine. It’s not going anywhere,” Marini concluded. “We’re going to need technology like this if we want to stretch that dollar out.”

FruitScout upgrades set

Matt King, CEO and founder of FruitScout, who sat in on the presentation by Boyer and Marini, pointed to improvements to FruitScout’s service, and responded to the findings by the speakers.

“Mark was dead on,” King said. “Last year, in the first year of operation, we were too slow getting reports back. That was due to a lack of structure. We’ve really addressed that problem now. We guarantee to get reports back to you the next day.

“In terms of size measurements, both of those algorithms are the same thing,” King said. “It’s the same system measuring trunk size and fruit size. I’m morally obligated to agree with Dr. Marini, but I don’t think the size calibrations that we were doing were apples to apples comparisons. Those were literally different apples.

RELATED: FruitScout pinpoints cropping targets››

“The big thing I’d like to point out is that with our fruitlet growth models, you no longer have to mark back to the same fruitlets,” King said. “We’ve taken the work out of that. You just need to go take a picture and size four to five fruitlets, come back four to five heat days later, take four or five new pictures and not necessarily the same ones. We’ve taken that work down to a couple of hours instead of 10 or 20 hours.

“You have to accept that there is a difference between commercial instrumentation and research instrumentation. There’s always going to be,” King said. “The question is, when is there enough information so the grower can make a decision, and what is that information worth.”

— Gary Pullano, editor

The post Grower, researcher look at the viability of FruitScout appeared first on Fruit Growers News.

It’s also the most challenging tool to implement successfully.

Growers recognize the economic impact of achieving proper crop load each year is large and justifies a more focused approach. Matt King, CEO and co-founder of FruitScout, believes the rigors of the management process can be eased with a simple, relatively inexpensive solution.

With a smartphone, growers can access an app that helps count buds, blooms and fruitlets to help growers streamline their crop load management strategies.

FruitScout is positioning itself as providing an easy-to-use smartphone app with computer vision and business intelligence tools. It enables growers to set targets for optimal crop load; monitor and measure from bud to bin to stay on track; and maximize orchard profit year to year.

“We came out of the greenhouse world,” King, a former Boeing engineer, told Fruit Growers News. “Our previous company did greenhouse technology bots, functionally similar to a drone, taking pictures, measuring everything.

“Boeing had this idea long ago when I was there, of measuring every widget with a camera at each step in the process in the instrumenting systems,” King said. “That’s the approach we brought into the greenhouse world. We’re mostly here in western Washington where they grow a lot of apples. We worked with Dan Plath at Washington Fruit that basically brought us kicking and screaming into the orchards. We started with drones. Then, we went to mounted cameras on tractors. We had a customer in Australia very early in the COVID days. We couldn’t fly down there, didn’t want to ship hardware, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll just build a demo on the phone.’ Just a demo to show them what we have. We were testing it in Washington Fruit’s orchard, and the head grower there walked by and came up to me and said, ‘I want that.’ A lightbulb went off in my head and I said, ‘why did I not think of this before.’”

“The phone is already in the grower’s pocket. They already are in the orchard,” King said. “So, it gets away from needing expensive hardware. From an entrepreneurial point of view, another way to express that is, Apple and Samsung are great at making hardware. Why do we want to reinvent the wheel? Let’s use their hardware. Let’s use a human being that’s already there. Because what that does is it opens up the market to us.

“If you look at our competitors who brought a hardware knife to a software gunfight, well, they have to have different hardware to do things in parallel. You think of an outfit like Washington Fruit, where they’re doing the hard thinning, there’s only a couple of weeks window in there. So, if you have a hardware solution, you have to have multiple copies of that hardware. You can’t just take one drone, or one Gator, one tractor and move it around to all of the orchards.

“So, there is this very large expense in hardware that you have to have,” King said. “Even if you’re getting it from a service, there’s a lot of that hardware to do all of this data collection in parallel. Whereas, with us, the grower’s there. He has a phone. The workers, even the migrant workers, they have phones. They have great phones. They have better phones than I do, generally. So that really completely opened up the gates for us.”

“We then launched small-scale pilots last year in January with seven different growers, Washington Fruit being the big one here in Washington, and then a lot of smaller ones in Pennsylvania and New York. We’ve started to talk to some folks in Michigan. We ran a full year pilot of it.”

FruitScout adapted Cornell University’s crop load management model.

“We didn’t invent precision crop load management. We developed a process,” King said. “Going back to my Boeing days, what we did was find a way to instrument that process.

“You start out by taking a picture of the trunk to get the trunk size,” King said. “This code is a geo-reference code. It gives a range of the data from the camera. It’s not a QR code. It’s the same code everywhere. You just put it on the end of a selfie stick and move it along with you. I’m measuring the trunk size to give us the optimal crop load. On the data acquisition side, you’re just walking down the row taking pictures. Then when it gets time for bud counting, you take a picture of the tree with all of the little buds on it, before and after pruning, to measure the process of pruning.

“It’s the same thing with blooming,” King said. “You’re taking a before, you’re taking an after to tell you how your hand thinning or chemical thinning worked.

“When we get to the fruitlet phase, we use the fruitlet growth model. Again, we did not invent it. Both Terrence Robinson at Cornell and Duane Greene at the University of Massachusetts were the pioneers behind this method. But with their method, you have to come with calipers and you have to measure the exact same fruit. If you try and do it on a scale you’re going to spend time getting numbers on little fruitlets and it’s just cumbersome to do.

“We took the process down to something very simple. You can take a picture of a fruitlet, come back four days later and take another picture. It doesn’t have to be the same fruitlet.

Obviously, you have to repeat it. You need to go to about 500 fruitlets on a block. But you don’t have to go through all of the work to make sure you’re getting to the exact same fruitlet every time. And keeping them in order, and all of that headache. You walk down a row, you take a picture, you’re done.

“That size measurement we then use to calculate the growth rate,” he said. “It will tell you the set rate after a chemical spray. So, we’re measuring size and we’re providing the set rate.

Part 2: Grower, researcher look at the viability of FruitScout››

Later in the season, obviously what you care about is the size of your fruit and how it’s growing. We provide that, as well. All you’re doing is taking a picture.

“The whole idea here is giving them information so they can get down to the individual tree level to get the maximum final result,” King said. “This is not a volume game. They’re not trying to grow more apples. They’re trying to grow a precise-sized apple. The size of the apple is determined by the number of fruit on the tree. That’s the optimal crop load.

“This all comes from that picture of the trunk,” King said. Now, you’ve got a target for the season. And then we give them stage targets which then they can adjust. What’s the target of the buds? What’s the target of the bloom? What’s the fruitlet phase?

“They can look at this at the individual tree level to make decisions about pruning. They can roll it up and look at the row, block or orchard level. For managers who want to know what’s going on, it’s quite simple to use.”

(Next month: A closer look at FruitScout, including the experiences of a grower and a researcher who analyzed the application’s early performance.)

– Gary Pullano, editor

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Innovation and out-of-the-box thinking seek to outfit farmers and especially specialty crop growers interested in automation and alternative energy solutions.

One example is the Monarch tractor, a 75-hp electric smart tractor manufactured in Livermore, California. Twenty of the tractors have been built, and some are at work on farms such as the Napa Valley’s Wente Vineyards. A two-wheel-drive version is offered for $58,000 – a four-wheel-drive version sells for about $68,000 – and they’re meant to replace conventional tractors that can be purchased for about $90,000.

The tractor is built with OEM parts that are accessible, and the battery can easily be swapped out. Monarch sells a cart for moving a spare battery. A charge is good for an average of 10 hours run time and provides about 80 amps of peak energy for 4-5 hours. Speed is governed below 25 mph.

The tractor features an autonomous drive mode as well as a “row following” mode and a “copycat” mode that reproduces a section of recorded driving, said Carlo Mondavi (picured at top), chief farming officer and co-founder at Monarch Tractor.

“I think 100% of tractors under 125 hp will be EVs (electric vehicles) by 2030, which is eight years from now,” he said. Mondavi is a grower of winegrapes and a winemaker, whose great-grandfather Cesaré Mondavi moved the family from Italy to New York to California to farm.

Monarch Tractor has had its share of industry recognition, including being honored by the CES Innovation Awards in the Robotics category for its flagship MK-V tractor. The tractor was on the road in January at the 2022 Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento.

Playing the field

Monarch isn’t the only EV for specialty crop growers receiving attention in the industry. An all-electric tractor and an all-electric refrigerated cargo truck were among the top 10 new products recognized by the World Ag Expo in advance of its annual event in Tulare, California.

The Solectrac e70N battery-powered electric tractor is the equivalent to a 70 HP diesel tractor, without the emissions but with all of the power needed on farms and in vineyards, and is a specially designed narrow tractor to fit between narrow rows of vines, according to a news release from the company. The tractor has a four-wheel drive, and its electric motor provides instant torque with only one moving part vs. the roughly 300 in a diesel engine, reducing maintenance needs. The e70N offers 4-8 hours of operation from a single charge, depending on load, and the ability to extend that time with exchangeable battery packs.

“We are committed to providing an opportunity for farmers around the world to power their tractors by using the sun, wind and other clean renewable sources of energy,” Solectrac CEO Mani Iye said in a news release. Solectrac tractors are assembled in Santa Rosa, California, and the company is B Corp certified. Solectrac is a subsidiary of Ideanomics.

Also recognized in the World Ag Expo’s top 10 was an all-electric Class 8 refrigerated truck from Hummingbird EV. The Class 8 trucks “handle the movement of ag goods from farm to warehouse, warehouse to packing centers, packing centers to cold storage, cold storage to retail warehouses, and from retail warehouses to consumers – with zero emissions,” according to the World Ag Expo website.

Other advanced, innovative tractors made the rounds at trade shows during the winter season. Ag giant John Deere – which in December announced acquiring majority ownership in Austrian battery technology provider Kreisel Electric Inc. – displayed at shows a fully autonomous, albeit traditionally powered, tractor that’s commercially available in 2022. New Holland Agriculture North America in February launched a tractor that runs on methane, which can be created from agricultural waste.

EV acceptance

Specialty crop growers value advances in automation in light of their challenges to find labor for tending and harvesting crops. Mondavi said most growers also see a value to electric vehicles out of a desire for cleaner farming, “Not one farmer wants to spray (pesticides).”

With solar panels and a microgrid, “you’re powering your tractor with the same energy that grows crops,” he said.

But even Mondavi thinks that government policy is an important part of EVs being accepted in agriculture.

“I would say that governments need to really embrace (EV vehicles in agriculture),” he said. “A farming tractor is a legacy investment, so a family might buy a tractor and say, ‘This is something my kids are going to have.’ And so, getting people to say, ‘OK, I’m going to get away from my legacy investment into the future of clean farming and whatnot,’ is probably the biggest challenge.

“And I think that having governments to help them get the support that they need – because, on a unit-by-unit basis, if you look at subsidies for electric vehicles, if you look at being able to take a diesel tractor off the road and put in a Monarch electric tractor, it’s like 14 cars when hooked up to the grid. It’s a significant amount of impact. Having governments – local or federal – be able to support the movement with some sort of subsidies so farmers are able to adopt these transitions, I think, is really important. And I say that as a farmer.”

A Monarch tractor at an organic blueberry farm in Oregon, Hopville Farms, was funded through the USDA’s Conservation Innovation Grant program. The tractor will be used to automate specific blueberry field maintenance tasks in an effort to reduce the use of diesel fuels while improving farming productivity, according to Monarch. In cooperation with Oregon State University, Hopville Farms and Monarch Tractor will work together to create a platform for field data collection that is expected to improve agronomy practices.

Farmers need a bit of help, making those transitions Mondavi said.

“We’re a conservative group, right?” he said. “I know that. We don’t just pivot, and make a quick move, reactionarily. And so, that’s one thing I think will be challenging.”

He also makes his sales pitch based on simple savings. A calculator on Monarch’s website allows growers to figure out their potential savings by going electric, based on fuel costs and how much they use their tractors.

“There’s significant savings to be earned by jumping into Monarch,” Mondavi said.

— Stephen Kloosterman, associate editor

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Among the industry contributors who long-ago recognized this opportunity is Walter Wafler, who operates Huron Fruit Systems in Pittsford, New York, an offshoot of Wafler Farms that manufactures equipment that streamlines the pruning and harvesting processes. With Wafler’s more than 30 years of engineering experience, the company has developed a suite of products that are customizable to any operation and can be used for different functions across seasons.

Huron Fruit’s self-propelled, multi-level harvest platform allows pickers to harvest the entire height of the tree with minimal effort. With the system’s bin exchange feature, pickers are able to harvest without interruption.

The Harvest Platform is highly versatile and can be used for other operations such as hand thinning, wire stringing, pruning and more.

Wafler said the platform’s ability to allow continual harvest of all parts of the tree, allows the system to produce increases in picking rates (85% for spot picking and 50% for single picking) as well as a 10% increase in packout per bin.

The platform also provides reductions in picker fatigue and bin exchange due to the automated bin transfer system. While five bins are in use, five empty bins follow behind in a trailer to allow continuous bin exchange.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest, which has gone up significantly, primarily because labor wages have been going up and people are starting to realize that a piece of equipment like this really pays for itself in terms of labor savings, quality improvements and overall efficiencies,” Wafler said while updating the project’s progress during the recent Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable & Farm Market EXPO in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“With the labor market wages going up and the supply of available people going down, it’s much more important for growers to look at a piece of equipment like this and take advantage of the cost savings,” Wafler said.

“We have units in New York state. Canada’s been a good market for us. We have units in Ontario, as well as Quebec. We have some in Ohio and a few scattered around the world. We have a couple in New Zealand, one in South Africa, one in Mexico. We’re starting to get some good traction.”

Wafler stressed that the machine “allows a grower to pick the tree in one pass without having to bin the orchard out. It also provides five bins so they can pick multiple products at the same time. For example, if you’re picking in a block that has hail damage or bird damage, instead of throwing that apple on the ground you can put it in a cull bin.

“The fact that we have five bins, we can keep one bin to culls. For the grower, it does two things. One, the worker has already picked that apple and been paid by the grower to pick it, and he can sell it for tree-run juice in the fall. The other significant savings is you have that apple in the box that is going to CA (controlled-atmosphere) storage and it doesn’t have to go over a pack line. (The grower) saves the money of having to store that apple, run that apple and then throw it away. Instead, he can use it for juice.”

Wafler called the savings “a big number because if it costs you eight cents an apple to store it, and eight cents an apple to run it over a pack line, and you get only four cents for juice, you’re taking 12 cents to that apple. Whereas, if you sell it out of the orchard as a cull, you get some money for it then, and you don’t incur costs that are going to be wasted. It’s a huge cost savings from a harvest standpoint.

“The other thing that’s really good about this machine is it’s multifunctional,” he said. “You can use it for trimming, hand-thinning, stringing wire and people can put 1,000 hours on it a year before they even start going to harvest. All of that labor runs easily at 2X in productivity, compared to not working from the platform.”

Wafler said growers “who have bought the system say, ‘I wish that I had done this five years ago.’ We’re getting a lot of good traction that way.”

“A lot of our customers are return customers,” he said. “They bought one machine to try to get their feet wet. Now, they’re coming back to say, ‘How can I afford to buy more machines?’ because it’s such a cost and time-savings for them.”

— Gary Pullano, managing editor; Photo at top: Workers pick apples from Huron Fruit Systems’ self-propelled, multi-level harvest platform. Photo: Huron Fruit Systems

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MapMyApple, a smartphone application that’s new in the North American market this winter, promises to help growers stay on top of what’s happening in their own orchards.

Available through Google Play – and, developers say, soon the iPhone App Store – MapMyApple is free for a 30-day trial period. Users pay a monthly subscription fee for continued access. So far, the app has roughly 1,500 downloads.

Although the app was developed in Europe, Fresh Agriculture Technologies is a startup company incorporated in San Francisco, and MapMyApple is also being marketed to growers in South Africa.

Marketing Manager Jovanna Dordic said the app makes suggestions based on growers’ input. Growers manually enter data about tree thickness, year of planting, apple variety, soil composition and location. Algorithms and machine-learning technology develop daily suggestions that are reviewed by the staff before being sent on to growers, she said.

Currently, the application is specific to apples and doesn’t translate to other tree fruit such as pears or peaches, she said.

The application makes daily recommendations on irrigation, fertigation and plant protection.

“When it comes to production, we have image recognition technology for pests and disease,” Dordic said. Growers upload photos of disease or pest damage, and receive a diagnosis and treatment recommendation.

“This is the most interesting feature for our users, for now,” she said. “That is the biggest problem, I think for every apple grower in agriculture.”

Another favorite feature is satellite imagery of a farm that refreshes every seven days.

“Our users really like it, because they can see their orchard in color,” Dordic said.

CEO David Blazevski said he developed the app in part due to his experiences on a small family farm in Serbia. His family, who grew apples as a side business, would often use a variety of sources – social media, friends and neighbors – to plan harvests, sprays or other time-sensitive orchard work.

Those decisions were important, he remembers, and professional opinions were expensive. It would cost 90-100 Euros ($99 to $110) to pay for a field visit from a professional agronomist.

“If you don’t know what to do, you can make big trouble,” Blazevski said.

The app is marketed at small-to-medium growers who are looking to boost their yield-per-acre figure closer to that of the larger growers who have more staff and professional advice.

“Our goal is to make them champions of apple growing,” she said.

Large and respected professional growers in Europe are helping to improve the app.

Stefan Manja is a tree fruit specialist and representative of Delta Agrar – the largest apple grower in Serbia, with roughly 1,2000 acres of apples in addition to other crops such as sweet cherries and plums.

Manja is helping to test the app and give feedback on the automatic diagnosis. He said he’d found “only some slight nuances,” or subtle differences, in the advice to treat pests.

Having grown apples in addition to working with Delta Agrar, Manja said a daily plan for tending to crop production comes in handy.

“I found it interesting as a reminder not to forget any task,” he said. “Where the app had an advantage over humans in the company was that – with people it can happen from time to time – with so many orchard blocks, with so many years of planting, so many different varieties, it’s easy to miss the right moment to make a decision, being overwhelmed with data.”

Manja said the app can recognize damage from a variety of pests and diseases, including Alternaria leaf spot, various leaf aphids including wooly aphids, codling moths, fire blight symptoms, brown marmorated stink bugs, Monilia, apple canker, powdery mildew, spider mites and blossom weevil.

“That’s what’s been implemented so far, and it’s been tested, and we’re continuously improving the recognition system … making it more precise,” he said. They continue to talk to growers about what their concerns and priorities are. “It’s fun to sit together and see what we can improve even further.”

— Stephen Kloosterman, associate editor

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The Davis, California-based company’s T-6 robotic strawberry harvester is one of just a handful of machines that are being taken seriously by the industry, due to increased labor challenges.

The T-6 automatically identifies red berries and picks them with two robotic arms, while a human operator drives it over the in-soil strawberry beds.

Kyle Cobb, one of AFT’s four founders, said the T-6 conducted a commercialized harvest last season on a 100-acre farm in the Santa Maria region of California. The harvested strawberries, he said, were sold into the retail market.

The harvester rolls over strawberry beds 48-56 inches wide, and can adjust for different heights, Cobb said. A key piece of the work was finding a soft touch for the robotic arms.

“You can’t do anything else before you figure out how to handle the fruit gently and carefully,” Cobb said.

He added, though, that “we’re still learning things every day.” One of the goals for future models is to remove the need for a human driver.

The robots aren’t for sale. So far, the strawberry picker works on a piece-rate basis. The AFT website welcomes growers to schedule a demonstration. Cobb said he didn’t know when the technology would be more widely available to growers.

But a release could be coming sooner than previously expected. In late summer, AFT got a $7.5 million boost from new partners, including the investment arm of Yamaha Motor, Kubota, Catapult Ventures and Impact Venture Capital. Nolan Paul, partner and global agtech lead for Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley, said Yamaha’s investment group has an interest in specialty crop technologies. Yamaha and Kubota’s expertise lies in large-scale manufacturing. Yamaha has a robotics group and is interested in diversifying its business, which has traditionally been focused on motorsports. Its other investments to date have included automated apple picker Abundant Robotics and New Zealand-based RoboticsPlus, Paul said.

Yamaha’s interest in specialty crop technology is based on the premise of fruits and vegetables becoming more popular with consumers, and resources of all kinds – labor, farmland, food – becoming more scarce, Paul said. Labor shortages sometimes result in acres of fruit going unpicked, and strawberry production, in particular, is vulnerable to labor problems.

“If you’ve ever been out to try to pick strawberries, it’s got to be the hardest job in the world,” Paul said. “You’re out there out all day, and you’re bent over. You’re running back and forth.”

In part to make the job less strenuous for an aging farm labor workforce, some growers have moved strawberry plantings onto elevated ridges, or “tabletops.” And most robotics solutions are aimed tabletops or elevated beds.

But Paul said Yamaha invested in AFT in part because “they’re one of the few companies trying to solve the problem in-soil as opposed to tabletop systems out of the soil.”

“Right now, in the U.S. the acreage for in-soil is, I would say, 99.9% of acreage,” he said. “That’s where the pain is. The U.S. may in time move to more tabletop (strawberry growing), but it’s more expensive; it requires more talent. The sophistication of how to grow in a tabletop environment – that talent pool is lacking in the U.S.”

Yamaha’s other attraction to AFT, Paul said is that tight-knit group already has completed one other robotics project. Greenbotics – a startup with automation for cleaning industrial-sized solar panels – was purchased by SunPower in 2013.

Robotics development – like strawberry picking and commercial strawberry growing – is challenging work.

“We’re just trying to be humble about how hard it is to be a grower,” Cobb said. “It’s certainly hard to be building robotic equipment and when you put those hands together, it’s even harder all around. We’re trying to be humble about the problems. You continuously learn and improve.”

— Stephen Kloosterman, associate editor

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Drones and insects have a lot in common: spindly appendages, buzzing noises, flight – and the ability to significantly impact fruit and vegetable crops. A California startup company is pairing the two as a service marketed at growers of high-value crops.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Intelligence (UAV-IQ) will drop the insects from drones throughout a farm. Beneficial insects are a cutting-edge and growing part of specialty crops agriculture, especially for organic growers. Drones can make dispersal more precise and efficient than hand application, said CEO Andreas Neuman, a U.S. Air Force veteran who once worked in the Global Hawk program.

UAV-IQ has already been testing its devices on high-value crops, Neuman said.

“We’re looking to do more in tree nuts and tree fruit,” he added.

The beneficial insects themselves are the biggest cost, he said. There is an additional expense of about $20 an acre for the service of the drone.

The beneficial insects are being provided by the U.S. arm of Dutch-owned Koppert company, which has offices in Michigan’s Howell as well as Oxnard, California. Koppert markets a wide range of pollination and beneficial insects for a variety of fruit crops including apples, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and cranberries.

Koppert marketing specialist Martin Walasek said strawberry growers would be most excited about the potential to airdrop beneficial insects. Koppert’s Spidex product consists of predatory mites that devour two-spotted spider mites and their eggs.

“They love that stuff,” Walasek said. “They land on the plant, feel it out, find the spider mites, and go to town.” Spidex was one of the first products developed in 1967 by Koppert’s founder, a cucumber grower in the Netherlands. Walasek said the company more recently studied flight patterns and the best dispersal rates for applying Spidex by drone.

As a pest, two-spotted spider mites feed on strawberry leaves and calyxes, often appearing as stippling, scarring or bronzing, according to a webpage of the University of California’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. The mites’ feeding is particularly damaging during the first two to five months after crowns are transplanted in summer and fall. Their highest numbers are often following the peak of spring fruit harvest.

To prepare for the service, Neuman said a grower should have a pest management agent visit the property – something that’s typically done for free.

Once there’s a prescription plan in place for the field, the visit can be scheduled, usually about one week in advance. An online tool allows clients to circle areas of their fields that may need more attention.

On the morning of the release, UAV-IQ picks up the insects and arrives at the field about 6:30-8 a.m.

“All we really need is access to the field,” Neuman said. Workers can’t be in the field during the dispersal, but during the course of a daylong large job, drone operators can work around them. Dispersal can last half a morning to a full day – a time savings for what can be an intensive process.

“We’ve replaced teams of 10 people with a single drone,” he said. A drone can cover as many as 150 acres in a day’s work.

The service this season is being offered primarily in California, although Neuman said he plans to offer it out-of-state early next year.

“We’ve gotten a fair amount of interest outside California,” he said.

– Stephen Kloosterman, associate editor

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In the agriculture world, we’re used to seeing all sorts of food processing innovative technology come to market. Earlier in the value chain, the farmers who grow the food you process are also reaping the benefits of automation and robotics. Here are just some of the many innovations that are changing the face of agricultural production.

Farmers face a slew of challenges throughout the growing season, including inclement weather, short growing seasons and labor shortages. Robotics and autonomous solutions could help farmers address some of those challenges.

Case IH, for example, launched its first autonomous tractor at the Farm Progress Show in Iowa in 2016. Using a tablet, farmers can operate and monitor the tractor from the side of the field while it moves along a pre-mapped route using GPS coordinates.

Case IH has been testing the concept in North America. The company believes the autonomous tractor could free farmers up for more important tasks, as the tractor can be programmed to work longer hours than human operators can.

While the advent of autonomous vehicles certainly raises questions, particularly when it comes to public safety, most concepts include advanced obstacle detection that halts the vehicle when unknown objects are detected. And while most concepts still require human presence, others show promise as truly autonomous units.

Swarm technology

German machinery manufacturer Fendt (AGCO) launched new swarm technology, called Xaver, in November 2017. The programmable and compact Xaver units plant corn in swarms. Each unit weighs about 40 kilograms and can operate for two to three hours before returning to the “mother hub” for refilling and recharging. Recharging takes just 30 minutes.

Not only is the technology efficient, but it also has a similar workload to that of current technology. A swarm of 12-15 units can do the same amount of work as a standard eight-row corn planter, said Sepp Nuscheler, AGCO senior communications manager.

The logistical hub is a housing unit that looks somewhat like a Jawa sand crawler from “Star Wars.” It can house anywhere between five and 100 robotic units, depending on its size.

The benefits of swarm technology are many, Nuscheler said. Because of their small size, the units are safer than autonomous tractors. They’re also designed to be extremely accurate and to reduce soil compaction.

“With autonomous big machines there’s always risk,” he said. “The safety and security of this little robot is very simple.”

DOT technology

In Canada, SeedMaster founder and president Norbert Beaujot also recognizes the value of robotic units. Beaujot is the creator of DOT technology, a U-shaped autonomous power platform that “mates” with other technology, such as seeders, sprayers and land rollers. Loaded with data-gathering sensors, DOT can be manually controlled with a handheld remote or operate in full autonomous mode.

What makes DOT Technology particularly interesting is its move away from the traditional machinery manufacturing models. The corporation takes a collaborative approach, actively encouraging other manufacturers to adapt their technology to become what they call “DOT ready.”

The autonomous DOT unit helps farmers save on fuel, labor, and equipment capital costs, and reduces overall CO² emissions, according to the company.

Already several companies have taken advantage of the technology, including Pattison Liquid Systems in western Canada, which has designed a DOT-ready sprayer. Owner Rick Pattison said the sprayer performs better than most sprayers on the market even though it has no cab.

The Pattison DOT Connect sprayer has features like auto height control and individual nozzle control. The individual nozzle control function, Pattison said, shuts nozzles off to avoid overlaps. The autonomous unit also has turn compensation, so the sprayer slows or speeds up as it turns according to the position of the boom. The boom itself is a dual, recirculating boom, a feature that ensures pressure is exactly the same from one end to the other.

Pattison said the unit addresses a number of big issues in agriculture, the most important being labor.

“Labor is an issue in agriculture these days,” Pattison said. “Trying to find people to put in the glass cage in the tractor all day long is not easy.”

“And when you take the human element away, the chance of mistakes lessens,” he said. “Because an autonomous unit doesn’t have any emotions; it doesn’t want to go faster, go slower or get home for dinner. It just does its job.”

More tech advancements

Around the world, smaller companies have designed autonomous units for very specific tasks. A German company called SPL has designed a battery-powered robot, called Jäti that uses laser beams to kill weeds in carrot crops.

“The robot is trained to detect the crop,” said Ernst Friedrich of SPL. “All that is not crop is weed.”

French company Carré has also designed a weeding robot, called Anatis, for weeding vegetable crops. Anatis uses a comb harrow to manually weed between crop rows. The robot is so precise that in just one pass it not only locates the problem, but also removes it, said Charles Adenot, director of marketing and sales at Carré.

Nothing seems more futuristic than autonomous drones designed for insect control. Designed by Dutch company PATS Indoor Drone Solutions, the mini drones take care of whitefly, golden twin-spot moth, and other insect pests by flying into them, kamikaze style. While they’re currently being marketed for the flower sector, Bram Tijmons, CEO and co-founder of PATS Drones, said they’ll be moving into vegetable and fruit production in the very near future.

— By Melanie Epp, contributing writer

Above, SeedMaster’s autonomous DOT unit. Photo: SeedMaster

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Imagine ground cherries that stay on the plant until harvest, potatoes that are more nutritious and disease-resistant, apples that genetically dodge browning after slicing, industrial hemp varieties fine-tuned for growers and microbes that help protect crops from diseases and pests.

These projects are in various stages of completion – and their place in the market in some cases hasn’t yet been determined. Public attitudes – and those of growers – on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and organisms engineered with next-generation technologies are not yet universally accepted.

Genetically-engineered specialty crops will find a niche of some kind in future markets. Researchers and industry leaders say it’s up to growers and consumers to decide how they’re used.

Above: Joyce Van Eck of the Boyce Thompson Institute is researching ways to make ground cherries and goldenberries easier to grow commercially. Photo: Mike Carroll/Boyce Thompson Institute

Grower confidence

The amount of confidence growers put in genome editing varies widely. Joyce Van Eck of the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University is overjoyed to have a few organic growers open to accepting disease-resistant plants from her genetics research, which includes CRISPR-edited potatoes, goldenberries and ground cherries.

“It’s their choice,” she said.

On the other hand, Neal Carter of Okanagan Specialty Fruits – which has developed apples genetically engineered not to enzymatically brown after being cut or bruised – said that the apple industry itself could stand some education about the safety and benefits of genome-editing.

Consumer issues have been significant, especially with concerns over genetically-edited foods.

A 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine suggested a “scientific consensus” that genetically modified foods were safe, but a Pew Research Center survey the same year found “a majority of Americans perceive disagreement in the scientific community over whether or not GM foods are safe to eat.” A minority thought scientists had a strong understanding of the health risks and benefits of genetically modified foods.

Clare Murray is chief business officer of LifeEdit, a research subsidiary of AgBiome that is developing gene editing tools to produce specialty crops with value-added traits – a specific area of interest is the U.S. fresh tomato market. An “early discovery” company, it will likely need partners to help with marketing and development of the basic science, Murray said. Educating consumers for a more favorable market is a big question, she said.

“It is absolutely the billion-dollar question,” Murray said. “We’d all like to be able to know how to do that and I don’t think AgBiome has the answer to that.”

State of regulation

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue did his part to boost genetics work in a Feb. 21 presentation at the USDA’s Agricultural Outlook Forum.

Perdue highlighted modified golden rice (genetically modified to curb Vitamin A deficiency) as an innovation that could help nourish the world’s growing population.

“You know, our agricultural research and education Extension infrastructure here in the United States, I believe it’s revered and emulated around the world,” he said. “I think it’s contributed to the development of tools, including biotech and other progressive types of technologies dealing with a better, more efficient production of food and fuel and fiber around the world.”

Not all governments are as welcoming to genetics.

The Court Justice of the European Union last year ruled that organisms developed with modern genome editing techniques were still essentially genetically modified organisms and thus subject to the union’s strict rules created to regulate first-generation GMOs.

Randy Shultz, a former Monsanto genome editing platform team leader, who was recently hired as head of Arcadia Biosciences Research and Development, said that not all cultures have to be equally accepting of the technology. In addition to gene editing capabilities, Arcadia has an advanced proprietary, advanced breeding platform, TILLING, that doesn’t edit genes. Food-chain traceability could segregate non-genome-edited foods and calm fears of “cross-contamination,” he said.

“We really just need to focus on innovating the whole system, being able to go from seed to fork – if you can track that whole pipeline or whole delivery system, the issues can go away,” he said. “The Europeans can have less technology, less improved, if they want, and other places can leverage technology much more effectively.”

Murray, a native of England with a doctorate degree in chemistry, said regulation should consider science.

“I think what we need more than anything is regulatory support based on science,” she said. “It’s really about designing your regulatory framework from data and science”

Van Eck noted that in Canada, the regulatory process for biosciences seems more straightforward: It’s about the finished products – the plants themselves – rather than the process for obtaining it, that is evaluated. In the U.S., the gene editing process is considered, but “knocking out” or silencing an existing gene gets less scrutiny than inserting a new gene, she said.

“These are tools,” she said. “We have so many tools that we can use in combination with plant breeding. I sometimes worry that people get enamored of technology. But it really is just a tool. Do you always need gene editing or CRISPR? No, you don’t. But there are instances for it to be helpful. So, I think the regulation needs to take that into consideration as well.”

Efficient research

Carter has now navigated the U.S. regulatory process for three engineered apples: Arctic Grannys, Arctic Goldens and Arctic Fujis. The company is now hip-deep in production and distribution. Carter said in late April it had vendor packages executed with four distributors. The company is building a 25,000-square-foot expansion onto its existing 3,000-4,000-square-foot facility for apple sizing and slicing while holding onto plans for a facility five times that size in Washington state’s Royal City.

But Carter said that future research is also exciting. Future genetics research could be more accurate and thus much more efficient, producing research plants with higher on-target responses, he said.

Van Eck sees a consistent improvement to CRISPR techniques: “It keeps on getting better and expanding.”

Murray points to the bottom line: more research at a reduced cost.

“The kind of bigger picture here is the more we can do to facilitate our ability to get more crops, better crops, better yields from the acreage we have available for farming – however we do that is going to be a great positive for the world as it were,” she said. “And gene editing is a tool in that toolbox.”

– Stephen Kloosterman, Associate Editor

In their own words

Joyce Van Eck of the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University

Work in specialty crops genetics: Van Eck has been interested in crop improvement since she was an undergraduate student, and has been working with tomatoes for two decades. Her lab has worked mostly on potatoes and tomatoes. Currently, her work involves domesticating ground cherries and goldenberries via CRISPR to shorten their seasons and keep them on the vine long enough for a clean harvest.

On the future of genetics in specialty crops: “There are some genes in plants, they’re called susceptibility genes that make them more susceptible to diseases, and if you can use a gene editing approach to knock out that susceptibility gene and make a plant more resistant, I think that organic growers might be interested in using something like that, knowing that disease is a big problem in organic production. We have a couple of organic farmers who are very interested in trying gene editing material that we have, which just makes me so happy – very thrilled to hear that – that there seems to be an open-mindedness about it.”

Arcadia Biosciences Research and Development Head Randy Shultz

Work in specialty crops genetics: Based in Davis, California, Arcadia Biosciences develops agricultural products for farmers. Products in their development pipeline include salinity tolerance for crops including vegetables, water use efficiency for tree crops, and a dedicated business unit focus on standardizing and improving hemp varieties.

On the future of genetics in specialty crops: “Consumers are more likely to accept new technology when they see a direct benefit in it. Cell phones, for example: I was a kid when cell phones first came out. There were actually a lot of people that were not going to use them because of the potential for brain cancer from the antenna, right? And that was part of society’s conversation. But imagine where we would be if we said we’re going to ban cell phones because of this potential risk that never really panned out. What kind of stopped that was, people like cell phones, and they like using them, and they like making their own decision about whether the risk is worth the reward. And you never really saw that in the whole GMO thing. It was all about farmer convenience and not necessarily about the consumer. I think it’s really important that the technology be used to deliver benefits directly to the consumer.”

AgBiome Chief Business Officer Clare Murray

Work in specialty crops genetics: LifeEdit is a subsidiary of AgBiome that was formed in 2017. Located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, the company is developing a number of genetic tools for genome editing of specialty crops.

On the future of genetics in specialty crops: “I think one of the really cool things about gene editing is, it’s going to have a much faster development time than for instance, your regular GMO. It’s going to be less expensive to get them there, and as a consequence, your crops are not necessarily going to have to carry the same cost of development as a GMO crop.”

Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) President Neal Carter

Work in specialty crops genetics: Carter, a Canadian, founded OSF in 1996. The group has developed a trio of non-browning apples: Arctic Goldens, Arctic Grannys and Arctic Fujis – the latter of which is set for USDA approval in 2019.

On the future of genetics in specialty crops: “I think part of our educational outreach includes the industry itself. We hadn’t thought we would have to be educating the industry that much, but it turns out we are. It’s surprising how often senior members of the apple industry itself don’t seem to understand pollen gene flow and bee pollination.”

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