BYAM (Berry Yield And Management)

World Resources Institute figures suggest that a third of all food produced is wasted, explaining 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and $940B economic losses per year. This project will focus on waste reduction in strawberry production (average waste 9%, about $1B globally) but the approaches developed will be applicable to other fruit crops too.

Picked fruit may be wasted either because it is defective or because it cannot be sold due to market conditions - typically because weather-driven production peaks result in oversupply. Growers try to manage both kinds of waste by surveying the crop (i) to identify causes of lost productivity (diseases, pests, microclimate changes, etc.) and therefore take corrective action and (ii) to predict and therefore better manage the impacts of future yield variation. Current best practice requires experienced harvest managers to 'walk' the crop (often spread over many disparate fields) and attempt a subjective visual assessment of crop health and potential yield for each field.

This project will improve yield monitoring and forecasting by using existing soft fruit picking robots to obtain much richer data about the condition of the crop. Denser survey coverage will facilitate the development of more accurate long-range yield forecasting models. Another benefit will be an innovative automatic yield monitoring system sensitive enough to small changes in productivity to provide growers with earlier warning of disease and other causes of waste.

This project will be implemented by three exceptionally innovative UK businesses: Dogtooth Technologies, developer of the state-of-the-art soft fruit picking robot, Fresh4cast market leader in the supply of yield forecasting tools, and Hugh Lowe Farms, a widely respected and large UK producer of berry fruits and influential member of the UK's largest soft fruit cooperative Berry Gardens.

Following successful completion of this project, the consortium partners will bring to market a yield monitoring/forecasting solution giving step-change performance increase compared to the current state of the art. This will benefit soft fruit producers globally, initially strawberry producers and later producers of other crops.