Good Fruit Grower takes a deep dive into the state of crop load management and computer vision in their March 15, 2022 Crop Management issue. While this edition will appeal to a wide range of fruit growers, there’s a distinct focus on developments in the apple industry.
The magazine features an in-depth interview with Dr. Terence Robinson, Tree Fruit Physiologist and father of Precision Crop Load Management, from Cornell University. Dr. Robinson shares his views on how the emergence of computer vision applications like FruitScout will make it possible to dial precision crop load management down to the individual tree level.
What’s Robinson’s end game?
"If I can map every tree, geolocate the information and store it in the tree, and communicate that to the human worker standing in front of that tree, then every tree is managed to the optimum fruit number . . . I don't know if it will ever happen, but it's my goal in life."
Good Fruit Grower goes on to profile a few of the technologies that are emerging to enable Robinson’s goal of precisely managing crops down to the tree level, including FruitScout. Of note is FruitScout’s ability to cover the entire crop lifecycle, from helping growers to determine the optimal crop load to predicting fruit set to implement the Fruitlet Growth Model, and beyond.
