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 ” The Fruitlet Growth Rate Model is a powerful model for predicting fruit set, but adoption of the model has been limited due to real or perceived time constraints and/or a measurement-intensive procedure. We have developed a simplified procedure based on sampling and weighing fruitlets from harvested spurs which generates accurate, real-time predictions of fruit set in apple that were comparable to those achieved with the FGM.“

 L. Hillmann, L. Gonzalez Nieto, T. Kon, S. Musacchi, T. Robinson, S. Serra, and T. Einhorn 

Read full article here, Fruit Quarterly (New York State Horticultural Society), Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 2022.

“Are we finally starting to see the adoption of labor-saving robots in agriculture? The short and unfulfilling summary answer is “It depends”. Undeniably, we are seeing clear signs of progress yet, simultaneously, we see clear signs of more progress needed.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/themixingbowl/2022/10/15/crop-robotics-2022-beyond-the-valley-of-death/?sh=31ed82913816

Elizabeth Higgins, CCE ENYCHP

Reprinted with permission from TREE FRUIT NEWS, July 2022, Volume 10, Issue 4. Cornell Cooperative Extension Eastern NY Commercial Horticulture Program

Are you concerned about crop load management on your farm?
Industry has taken note and you may have more tools for making
management decisions in the future. “One of the challenges
expressed by growers is that there still is a lot of manual time
measuring and counting blossoms, fruitlets and apples, which is not only time-consuming, but it is subject to inconsistencies and
different views depending on the staff input,” said Jenny Lemieux,
CEO of Vivid Machines, one of three companies trialing precision
mapping and remote sensing tools this summer in New York. In
addition to Vivid Machines, Farm Vision and Fruit Scout are also
conducting on-farm trials.

Vivid Machines, founded in Toronto in 2020, has developed a system they call “X-Vision” which captures the quantity and quality of fruit crops from blossom to harvest. The X-Vision system has three components: a high-speed multispectral camera with a vehicle mounted housing system, a camera control and real-time analytics app, and a cloud-based analytics platform. Mounted on a tractor or ATV, the camera captures images as it moves through the row, and the data can be viewed in real time via mobile device. The X-Vision system can get accurate crop counts moving at a speed of up to 7 miles per hour, according to Vivid Machines CEO Jenny Lemieux. The system can examine trees, review blossom clusters, and measure apples, Lemieux said in a company press release. “Growers can see this information and filter the data by variety, block, date, and other factors to get a very granular view of their orchards and how they may change over time.” Vivid’s first paid trials started this season, with six growers in Ontario and New York. According to Produce News United Apple is one of the New York growers in a beta test.

Farm Vision Technologies, founded in Minnesota in 2017, has been testing and refining a handheld crop load management tool for the past few years. It is now commercially available to growers, said CEO and co-founder Patrick Plonski in an article in Good Fruit Grower. The handheld Farm Vision tool contains a Samsung phone with computer vision software, attached to a more sensitive GPS sensor, he said. We view it as the simplest possible system that can get good accuracy.” For thinning decisions, the grower marks off a section of about five trees, or roughly 15 feet long. The grower then faces the canopy, pushes record and moves the camera in an up-and down motion while walking along the row sample. It takes about a minute to get the data needed to use the fruitlet growth model. For estimating harvest yield, the grower faces the camera toward the fruiting wall at about eye level, so the whole tree is in view, pushes record and walks or drives the length of the row. If the unit is mounted on a vehicle, speeds of up to 10 miles per hour work fine, depending on the terrain and vehicle suspension. Anna Wallis of Michigan State and Craig Kahlke of the Lake Ontario Fruit Team are working with Farm Vision Technologies on on-farm trials.

The final company is FruitScout, which launched in 2021 with a
handful of pilot customers and plans a wider rollout later this year
and next. Like Farm Vision Technologies, FruitScout uses a
smartphone with an app. The FruitScout app guides users as they
walk down an orchard row, taking a picture of each tree. How many trees should be sampled to get a representative sample depends on variety. According to the company highly variable Honeycrisp may need 15 percent of the block sampled, while Gala just needs 5 percent, but the company is fine-tuning these recommendations based on field trials according to an article in Good Fruit Grower. From the images collected, the technology counts buds, then blooms, and finally fruitlets to help growers optimize crop load management strategies. Growers set targets in the app, and Fruit Scout’s dashboard tells them how close they are through each step of the season. It also suggests a target fruit count based on the size of the trunk. The Lake Ontario Fruit Team is also working with FruitScout on on-farm trials and FruitScout is currently commercially available to growers.

You can learn more about both Farm Vision and FruitScout at the
Lake Ontario Fruit tour on August 9, 2022 in Orleans County. For
more information and a registration link, go to: lof.cce.cornell.edu/
event.php?id=1669.

Company websites

• Farm Vision Technologies https://www.farm-vision.com/
• Fruit Scout https://fruitscout.ai/
• Vivid Machines https://www.vivid-machines.com/

Recent Articles with More Information

Produce News (May 3, 2022) “Favorable weather, new technologies
open season for United Apple” https://theproducenews.com/apples/
favorable-weather-new-technologies-open-season-united-apple

Tom Karst (May 5, 2022) “With a bigger crop expected this year,
technology aids New York apple grower” The Packer https://
www.thepacker.com/news/packer-tech/bigger-crop-expected-yeartechnology-aids-new-york-apple-grower

Matt Milkovich (March 21, 2022) “A Vision in Hand” Good Fruit
Grower https://www.goodfruit.com/a-vision-in-hand/

Mat Milkovich (March 21, 2022) “Computer eyes” Good Fruit Grower
https://www.goodfruit.com/computer-eyes/

Kate Pregnaman (March 21, 2022) “Phoning in Precision” Good Fruit Grower https://www.goodfruit.com/phoning-in-precision/

University research and R&D from ag tech companies converge on the practice of precision crop load management…

Optimized crop load delivers optimum profitability. 

Even the researchers and extension specialists who have promoted precision crop load management for the past decade agree that is far easier said than done.

“To do that, we’ve developed manual approaches that are time-consuming, and no one likes to do them,” said Terence Robinson, applied fruit crop physiologist at Cornell University. “Growers love the information but hate to do it for their farm.”

Read more at goodfruit.com

Cornell University tree fruit physiologist Terence Robinson said precision crop load management is critical to orchard profitability, and he hopes to see developing technology that will eventually help growers do it on a tree-by-tree basis.

Peru, New York; February 11, 2022  The 2021 results of precision apple orchard management research funded by the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program are now posted under the Research: Horticulture and Local Foods tab at nnyagdev.org (see About Us: NNYADP Projects tab).

The research, aimed at fully understanding how to best incorporate the use of computer-based fruit physiology modeling into timing orchard thinning practices to achieve optimal crop load and quality, includes data on the use of alternative thinning products and evaluates the economic impact. Read more here at Northern New York Agricultural Development Program…

Basedow will present the results of these in-orchard thinning trials in more detail as part of a “What’s New in Crop Load Management” webinar via Zoom from 1:30 to 4:45 pm on March 18, 2022. To register, go here…

Anna Wallis, Apple Production Specialist MSU Extension

10/3/2021

Precision agriculture technology was at the forefront of this year’s RidgeFest, held on August 27, 2021. RidgeFest is a field tour held annually by the Michigan Pomesters industry group in ‘The Ridge’ area, just north of Grand Rapids, to celebrate the rich history of this fruit growing region with education, development, and collaboration among industry Pomester members. The tour featured precision technologies available and under development for tree fruit production. Over 250 people attended the event, including farmers, extension, and other industry representatives. MSU Extension assisted in organizing the event, including coordinating the Computer Vision technologies stop.

The first stop on the tour, hosted by Bernard J. Thome Orchards, included a showcase of Computer Vision Technologies. Dr. Bruno Basso’s lab from Michigan State University showed their drone in action, used to capture variation in orchards and other crop systems. Data is used to develop models for more precise management. Next, several companies shared their technologies for crop load management and pest scouting, including Farm Vision, Vivid Machines, and Automated Fruit Scouting.

Vivid Machines, a Canadian company co-founded by Jenny Lemieux and Jonathan Binas, demonstrated a vehicle-mounted system that provides real-time data displayed on a mobile device as the operator travels down the row. The technology is designed to collect information on blossom cluster counts, crop load, insect pests, and diseases, among other things. The group shared photos of applets viewed by human eyes vs. their computer vision cameras, illustrating how applets can be detected, even against green backgrounds, and counted and sized https://vivid-machines.wistia.com/medias/jwk7yrocpz. The company is taking a limited number of contracts for growers to trial their Vivid X system in the 2022 season.

Farm Vision Technologies, founded by Patrick Plonski and I. Volkan Isler of the University of Minnesota, shared their work developing a standalone app for precision management in tree fruit, and the research they have been doing in collaboration with MSU Extension. Their technology been developed in partnership with Jim Luby and other apple industry members. The technology is sensitive enough to detect fruit as early as 6-8mm stage, guiding thinning decisions early in the season. It is also used to estimate crop load later in the season. Results of research this season and results will be shared in future outreach.

FruitScout, a Washington-based company, explained their whole-systems approach to gathering data using a smartphone and integrating it into a cloud-based PCLM dashboard. Data collected on buds, flowers, young fruit, and mature fruit in the orchard throughout the season, and then integrated into the dashboard, which growers can use to make management decisions.

The second stop included a sprayer demo hosted by Rob Steffens Orchards. The runway type of event featured each sprayer moving down an orchard row, with eight different sprayers in the lineup. Machines included conventional airblast, multi-row, air-assist, and over the row sprayers.

The decision by organizers to highlight precision agriculture technologies in Ridgefest this season was intentional and reflects the industry’s excitement about these innovative tools and approaches. The tree fruit industry in Michigan recognizes the tremendous potential of these technologies to improve farming efficiencies and ultimately increase farm productivity. Many growers are committed to learning more about the options currently available, as well as innovations that will become available in the future, through Ridgefest, on-farm trials, and other opportunities. MSU Extension will continue to prioritize education and research on these technologies — incluing participartion in PACMAN — in the coming seasons.

How smartphone apps and cameras can make accurate grape cluster counts.

PACMAN says “Any reason this could not be adapted to apple orchards? Bud counts? Flower counts? Green fruit counts? Yield and fruit size estimation?”

https://www.goodfruit.com/quick-pics-for-grape-cluster-counts/

“Cheaper cameras and faster processing capabilities open a world of opportunities for orchard imaging, but which approaches will pay off?”

Kate Prengaman, TJ Mullinax // August 12, 2021

Good Fruit Grower

The first time I watched a camera system count apples, it crawled slowly through the orchard just before harvest, weighed down by the processing speed of all the imagery. Four years later, imaging systems can whiz through orchards — recognizing the crop through the stages of development from bud (in some cases) to bin, mapping an entire block or capturing detailed sampling data.

These rapid advances in computer vision have created the opportunity for companies to develop specialized tools for orchardists, from complex, quad-mounted systems with custom lighting to smartphone-based sampling. 

Today’s imaging systems are beating not just their pilot-project predecessors but also the workers who hand count buds before pruning or fruitlets before thinning, showing true promise for the future.

Read more here…

Nice coverage of PACMAN by Kate Prengaman of Good Fruit Grower: https://www.goodfruit.com/precision-crop-load-management-is-the-topic-of-our-time/ “Precision crop load management project seeks to bring technology to a tedious orchard task, helping growers maximize crop value.” Thanks Kate, but I wish you had referenced pacman.extension.org…

At the International Fruit Tree Association Annual Conference — held virtually February 22-24, 2021 — PACMAN Principal Investigator and Cornell University’s Dr. Terence Robinson introduces Precision Apple Cropload MANagement to the attendees. Thanks to IFTA and Karen Lewis of Washington State University for sharing this video.