Pollen Sense Monitors for Pollination and some Diseases

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Predicting yields is very helpful both to optimize inputs and for marketing purposes. Utah-based Pollen Sense is helping hazelnut and olive growers with this by monitoring pollen, says CEO Landon Bunderson.

Bunderson… “They maybe get two, three, four really good pollen days. And since hazelnut is predominantly wind pollinated, that pollen has to reach the female flower and pollinated in order to get nut set. And like a lot of tree nut crops, they're mast years where you get these really heavy sets. And predicting that can help you understand and know whether or not you want to go all out in your inputs, or whether you kind of want to hold back. Same goes for olives. Although olives are usually grown in a Mediterranean climate. So it's less about the rain and more about just predicting yields.”

Bunderson says this technology can also be used to monitor for crop disease spores as well.

Bunderson… “Not very many growers really know or care about pollen production, but they care an awful lot about diseases. And if you look at the tenets of integrated disease management, one of the three things that has to be present for disease is the pathogen, and that's what we do. We monitor for the pathogen in the air.”

Check out www.PollenSense.com if you’d like to learn more about this technology.