Has there ever been a time when the apple industry has been planting new orchards on so many different growing systems? Don’t think so. The creative energy and diversity are great. It does beg a question – is there one system that’s better than the rest? Or with the right management, can any of them excel?
Agriculture Victoria have scientifically validated Green Atlas Cartographer for mapping of flowers, fruit, canopy geometry, light interception and yield estimation in apples. Lead author Alessio Scalisi (pictured) concluded that “Cartographer provided accurate predictions of several important crop parameters, which “can be beneficial both for growers and scientists to collect data for multiple crop properties at high spatial resolution and replace labour-intensive operations.”
Click HERE for a full paper
The Covid induced labour shortage looks set to cost the apple industry in the order of $100M this harvest season.
Media stories tend to give the impression to the ‘man in the street’ that the apple crop can be or soon will be picked by robots.