AI Applications in the Apple Industry

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

One of the advantages of artificial intelligence is that it can be molded to fit the needs of every industry and company. Executive director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, Ines Hanrahan says for the apple industry, they’re excited to use AI to better understand climate and how it affects trees, especially during dormancy.

Hanrahan… “The tree doesn't talk so we need to know how we can keep it in dormancy and how to, how it comes out so that when we have these wonky weather scenarios, it doesn't damage the tree or the buds and we don't lose all the yield. And that's another area where we really need to need to work, especially on the physiology side.”

Hanrahan hopes to use these innovations to produce simulations and predict weather conditions.

Hanrahan… “We know what it takes for an apple to sunburn, and we can also sense certain parameters, but we can never measure all the apples in an orchard to optimize what we do for sunburn protection. Most of the time we do evaporative cooling, but what we can do is we can use AI to estimate what will happen when we have enough data so we can feed models, so that will help a grower be like, okay, to use the water more effectively, more efficiently and have less damage to the apple and predicting when would be the right time to turn it on without actually having a sensor, a physical sensor, on every piece of fruit in every location.”

Again that’s Ines Hanrahan from the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission.