Developing LiDAR to predict and optimise post harvest fruit quality.

UK apple orchards vary greatly in their productivity and profitability mainly due to management of the tree structure in the orchard. The best orchards performing almost twice as well as the average, producing higher yields of optimally sized and quality fruit resulting in much lower levels of wastage post farm gate. To address this waste issue we plan to develop a highly innovative technology package to map and record the tree systems used by producers. The output will enable producers to manipulate their tree management to help maximise the economic return of their crops and therefore make their product more competive and more available in the marketplace. Equipment and methods for doing this, will be based on our previous work developing the PACE (Pesticide dose Adjustment to the Crop Environment) scheme. We believe this highly innovative technology will position the UK pipfruit industry at the forefront of precision farming technologies within pipfruit production globally.