What is the Precision Pollination project?
This project explores the role drone technology can play in improving yield, fruit quality and forecasting in UK strawberry production.
Project objectives are:
- Optimise the implementation of Polybee drone technology in commercial crops of protected strawberries in polytunnel and glasshouse systems.
- Evaluate the potential to increase yields of class 1 strawberry fruit through improved pollination using Polybee drones.
- Analyse environmental data, harvest records and strawberry retail prices to identify periods of the season when enhanced pollination could boost resilience of UK strawberry growers through consistently higher class 1 yields.
- Collection of crop video imagery with drones to enhance accuracy and consistency of yield forecasting practices in strawberry production.
Ideology
- The approach Polybee is taking for yield forecasting is to build a relationship with the ripeness (objectively classified based on colour of the fruit) to the environment (temperature and humidity) by collecting videos of a set number of rows at a cadence of at least 2 datapoints between harvests.
- Polybee’s tracking technology can be used to spatially and temporally track fruits which is the key to achieving the ripening curve for forecasting.
- This ripening speed can then be used with the forecasted temperature to estimate how quickly the fruit-set will be ready to harvest.
Challenges
- Identifying the ripeness accurately: Since the ripening of strawberry is a linear colour change of a pale green to red from the stem to the apex, it is a challenging task to correctly identify the ripeness, especially given the high occlusion due to the leaves and stems.
- Avoiding double count: Since the video needs to be split into multiple parts, to allow for easier and more robust uploads, there are overlapping regions when a video stops and subsequent video starts, which need to be carefully handled.
Timelines
- Owing to the issues challenges there will be a slight delay in relaying the day before predictions for a couple of weeks.
- Once the issues are addressed, the rest of the season can be continued with an update which will be presented on our dashboard.
- The details of which will be promptly shared once some of the major issues are resolved.
Project partners
