Grape Growers and Orchardist's Slow to  Adapt to Drone Technology

Grape Growers and Orchardist's Slow to Adapt to Drone Technology

Susan Allen
Susan Allen
With the Fruit Grower Report I 'm Susan Allen. Potato growers and other row crop farmers are becoming adept at gathering aerial and ground sensing data using remote sensors like drones but Assistant Professor, Viticulture Extension Specialist Michelle M. Moyer, Ph.D., from WSU will tell you grapes growers and orchardists seem to be late adapters, because for them there is simply too much information.

MOYER: Especially in speciality crops, especially tree fruit crops and wine grapes there's are a lot of companies who sell a lot of remote sensing aerial imaging and all that fun stuff and they take the imaging and give growers the data but the backlog is , well, what do you use it for? How do I take this data that you're giving to me and how do I make a decision. I think that has been the bottleneck for adoption. At what point is too much data too much data? Yea the technology is there to collect data but we don't know how to use it. So I'm not seeing it as much in wine grapes out here, there is some interest in the potential of aerial spraying but that is a legal conundrum that hasn't been solved yet.

On the upcoming Viticulture Field Day field day August 12 there will be a drone demonstration.

MOYER: Lav Khot from Washington State University ( he's our drone guy, you've probably read about him), he's' going to be talking about aerial and ground sensing using remotes sensors such as drones and other pieces of equipment to collect that data so these are some future potential applications that we might be able to use.

The Washington Viticulture Field Day will be August 12 it's co-sponsored by WSU Viticulture Extension and the Washington State Grape Society, visit their websites for more information.

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