Precision fruit growing

Agroalimentaria Mas Saulot innovates in precision fruit growing by applying the latest technological advances and sustainable and eco-responsible production systems

Our mid-term vision is to fully mechanize the fruit sector through robotic harvesting. We start from the premise that it is simpler to adapt the shape of trees to mechanization than to adapt machines to trees. For this reason we are betting on the international technologies of the future that we present to you below.

We are currently developing the R+D+i CDTI IDI-20150008 project; Wall fruit production with controlled costs, co-financed by FEDER, the European Regional Development Fund. The present strategy is based on wall fruit production with reduced and controlled costs through specific mechanized pruning and thinning solutions.

These techniques have allowed us to verify the good adaptation of the different varieties planted in double axis and the efficiency and effectiveness of the mechanized cutting operations: summer pruning, winter pruning and flower thinning. This is a technique that we will gradually incorporate over the next few years and as apple fields are planted, since it is not possible to adapt existing single-axis plantings.

Who knows what the next decade holds? Although it is uncertain, everything points to a mechanized harvest; robots that, thanks to infrared, will harvest and record the information of the apples. In the buttons below this text you will find two links to the most advanced prototypes that are currently being worked on. The first prototype is from Israel and the second from California. Take a look to see what we will surely be able to apply to our fields over the next few years.

Precision treatment systems and inoculum handling techniques to rationalize the use of phytosanitary products in the control of apple tree mottle

One of the problems presented by apple production in the Girona area is speckling, caused by the fungus Venturiainaequalis and which significantly conditions the viability of apple cultivation. In the Girona area, mottled control concentrates more than 80% of phytosanitary treatments. One of the critical points for the management of the disease is to control the primary infections that develop during the spring.

A very effective way to limit or reduce primary infections is by reducing the primary inoculum, by sanitizing the farms, and carrying out the treatments according to agroclimatic prediction models (the best known are the Mills model and the RIMpro model), which indicate favorable conditions for infections to thrive. Even so, the number of phytosanitary treatments to control the disease is still very high, and in the current context in Europe, where the reduction in the use of phytosanitary products will be a short-term imposition, it is essential to develop and define new strategies of mottle control that allow a significant reduction in the number and impact of phytosanitary treatments.

To know more consult this document.

With the financing of: Project financed through Operation 16.01.01 (Cooperation for innovation) through the Rural Development Program of Catalonia 2014-2022. Order ARP/113/2021, of May 20, which approves the regulatory bases for aid to cooperation for innovation through the promotion of the creation of operational groups of the European Association for Innovation in matter of agricultural productivity and sustainability and the implementation of innovative pilot projects by these groups, and Resolution ACC/1660/2021, of 27 May, by which the aforementioned aid is called.