In September, Dan joined the Callaghan Innovation Horticultural Automation Immersion tour with a group of like-minded Kiwis from a range of backgrounds – horticultural robotics, precision agriculture research, remote mapping and sensing, kiwifruit management, and vegetable production. The trip was part of the Callaghan Innovation Agritech Activator initiative. There was too much to cover in a blog post like this, but we present a few highpoints and overall impressions, starting with Washington State and a quick side-trip into Oregon.
The first week was spent in Washington State starting in the Yakima region. We are most grateful to Ines Hanrahan, Director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission for arranging our visits and being our host and guide. We visited fruit packing and dispatch facilities, orchards and research centres, and looked out our bus windows as we covered many miles through orchards, vineyards and crops in a very low-rainfall area. The soils, climate and availability of water from stored snowmelt are very good and have enabled the very large state fruit industry to develop. Many operations are still family owned and operated, albeit at very large scale.
So what are their issues?
Speaking with Brett Valicoff, it would seem they face very similar challenges to New Zealand growers: increasing cost and reducing availability of labour, biosecurity threats with new pests and diseases and a reducing set of active ingredients to control them, climate change and reducing water security, and trying to make a buck with rising costs and reducing returns. It sounded very familiar.
Packhouse and dispatch automation plays an increasing role and places we visited have made significant investment. As well as the expected automated fruit grader systems, there was a move toward more automation in packing lines, including using Robotics Plus technology. We saw robotic pallet stackers at the Valicoff Fruit Company, and fully automated storage and inventory handling at Matson Fruit’s cold storage warehouse in Selah. Later in Bingen, we viewed the automated pear packhouse at the Mt Adams facility, where we saw the use of grader-scanned images of fruit to retrain algorithms for any new quality problems that arise.
A visit to the USDA-ARS Temperate Tree Fruit and Vegetable Research Unit in Wapato focused on entomology. The unit aims to provide growers with effective and sustainable tools for integrated pest and disease management, and consumers with safe and healthy produce. None of our group is keen on meeting a Northern Giant Hornet, a huge pest that quickly destroys honeybee colonies.
Many thanks to
- Rebecca Schmidt Jeffris for her presentation on natural enemy management of earwigs, identifying non-target effects of herbicides on natural enemies, and natural enemy releases with drones.
- Jacqueline Serrano for her talk on lures to better monitor introduction and spread of Northern Giant Hornet (Asian Giant Hornet, or murder hornet) which we certainly do not want. She also works on other hornets that may be relevant to NZ.
- Rob Curtiss for his presentation on the use of sterile insect releases for codling moth control in apples and pears via drones.
On-orchard, we had the opportunity to spend a few hours with Kyle Cobb and the Advanced.Farm crew who were field-testing two of their Robotic Apple Harvesters. Building on their success with robotic strawberry harvesting, the team is moving to the vertical plane for apples grown on a 2D systems, the same as in New Zealand. Refreshingly, they were clear that there is a way yet to go before the technology competes with human pickers.
At the Monson Fruit Company we were given a demonstration of Hectre’s New Zealand fruit scanning technology in action. The system’s camera scans all fruit on the top layer of bins as transport trucks bring it into the packing facility, with image analysis algorithms giving high quality statistics to aid logistics. Hectre has presented at LandWISE conferences, but it was great to see the system working for real in a large US facility. Growers reported trying many of the New Zealand bred apple varieties but had found a number “just don’t seem to do well”. The US Honeycrisp and related varieties fill a large part of their market.
A visit to Craig Harris’ cherry orchard introduced the re-emergence of the virus, Little Cherry Disease, or Western-X, which historically has severely impacted US and Canadian production over decades. Complete tree removal including poisoning to kill infected roots before they graft with neighbours is the current response, resulting in 240,000 trees being removed between 2015 and 2020, with more cases of the disease still being identified. Slow symptom expression makes it likely the disease has spread before it can be detected.
Hops are big business in Washington State and the area around Yakima, which produces about 80% of the world’s hops. With harvest in full swing, we were able to follow the process from the field, through transport, offloading, stripping, cleaning and drying, to baling and finally to examples of the product. New Zealand varieties such as Nectaron feature among the many US ones.
Moving eastward we reached the Washington State University campus at Prosser, which Dan last visited for a week when learning about the CalPoly irrigation system auditing procedures in 2003! This was the basis for the New Zealand Piped Irrigation System Performance Assessment Code of Practice and variants such as IRRIG8 and the simplified bucket test. At Prosser, Gwen Hoheisel talked to us about spray application technologies and current research into precision spraying and a solid-set delivery system for tree fruit, table grapes, and wine. Ex-pat Kiwi Scott Harper, Program Director of the Clean Plant Center Northwest, gave an overview of their activities removing viruses from plants, especially related to tree fruit, hops, grapes. Later, at the Center for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems, Matt Whiting and Manoj Karkee presented some of their research into automation including robotic apple pruning and harvesting.
Crossing the arid high desert south of Prosser, we reached the irrigated zone fed from the Columbia River and were hosted by Kevin Corliss and Mike Means at the Ste Michelle, Paterson Winery. Once again, the soils and climate, combined by access to plentiful water, have enabled a large industry to develop. The contrast between irrigated and unirrigated is stark. The Ste Michelle vineyards are moving away from wooden posts to relatively simple warratah supported systems, which seem suited to mechanised installation along with their current mechanical planting.
Following down the Columbia River, we dipped into Oregon to visit Chris Adams at the Oregon State University Mid-Columbia Experiment Station. There is good collaboration with the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission and others with work primarily on pear and cherry production systems, integrated pest management and post-harvest storage.
Many thanks to the Callaghan Innovation team who organised and led the Horticultural Automation Immersion tour: Kev O’Reilly, Andrew Cameron and Simon Yarrow. Thanks to all our Washington State and Oregon hosts for generosity of time and knowledge sharing. And thanks to Kiwi travelling companions for their insights and openness about both our US experiences and their aims and activities in New Zealand.
Reports from California visits and the FIRA Robotics event in Salinas to follow.