The views on how do we make tree-based agriculture more environmentally friendly and consumer safe in regards to the product, widely differ. How, when and where do we implement today's freshly acquired knowledge into practice to deal with this challenge? How do we achieve higher acreage under eco-friendly fruit production?
How about this for a start?
http://www.saiplatform.org/uploads/Library/PPsFruit2009-2.pdf
Considering ressource-efficiency and yield in orchards, we tried (i) to use soil maps for zone- or tree specific measures in the production following the concept of precision agriculture in arable crops, and (ii) to model the fruit development. As a result we will go further in the automated monitoring of plant responses by means of sensors, since the phenotyping in-situ may solve the question of how much should we give and when we should apply it.
It seems as very novel approach you are using. Being that the largest cost within fruit production is plant protection we, on the other hand, are investigating and trying to improve trunk injection delivery of pesticides and biopesticides so that it can meet high standards of efficiency achieved by spraying. The idea is to be more target precise in pest control and minimize the negative environmental impact of pesticide drift generated by air-blast sprayers. Our group is working on evaluation of insect and disease control efficiency via trunk injection and the improvement of currently available trunk injection technologies.
maybe harvesting is even more expensive in table fruit, still I have absolutely no knowledge in plant protection (studied physical chemistry and moved directly to tree physiology after graduation), but we have a project on adaptive flower thinning. Here we need the flower distrubution per tree in real time that we measure with a stereo camera. But it seems there are many work groups approaching the more accurate application of chemicals by means of sensors, nodes conditioning etc; your approach sounds even more interesting.
I believe the interface between engineering (technology), tree-based agriculture, and science should yield in 21st Century precise agriculture solutions like I have seen in your papers 'Advances in precise fruit production' and 'A sensor based approach to understand spatial variability in orchards'. Chemical thinning of flowers or fruits is a big thing these days - topic all about precise fruit-culture. In USA the conundrum is: 1. the cost of plant protection in orchards is very high, 2. the environmental issues associated with pesticide drift are increasing and cost of wasted pesticides is considerable, 3. pesticide resistance is always a risk, 4. the legislative scrutiny on pesticide use and registration is heightening. Novel solutions are needed.
Sustainability rating:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/MG/MG36700.pdf
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Agricultural Science
- Horticulture