In Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, a collaborative innovation between Fruition Hawke's Bay and HortPlus is offering orchardists a new way to visualize crop data, enhancing decision-making processes. Since 2019, Fruition has equipped growers with Green Atlas Cartographer scanners for precise bud and fruit counting across their orchards. Recognizing the complexity of interpreting scanner data, the partnership led to the creation of interactive digital maps. These maps consolidate crop density data into easily interpretable 'heat-maps' for efficient orchard management.
Jack Hughes, Fruition Hawke's Bay's managing director, emphasized the utility of these maps in simplifying orchard assessments and facilitating actionable insights. The initiative underscores Fruition's role as the sole distributor of Green Atlas scanners in New Zealand, with a notable deployment covering 2600ha of kiwifruit and apples in the 2023-2024 period. Hughes highlighted the scanners' capability to simultaneously gather critical data on fruit size, number, and leaf area, offering a comprehensive view of crop load and potential for meeting market size requirements.
This venture into digital mapping is part of a decade-long collaboration between the two companies, yielding various technological solutions for orchard management, including the Trappa app. This application enables certified scouts to log pest data, directly integrating with Fruition's client portal to support informed pest control strategies. The ongoing partnership continues to focus on developing accessible, practical tools for enhancing orchard productivity and management.
Source: nzherald.co.nz