"Hidden Citrus fruits? Now that's not a problem anymore!"

Cutting costs by stoppingmanual fruit counting

An apple and pear growernoticed that doing manual fruit counting took him and his employees a lot oftime.

Problem

Rowayne Syster, manager at Verlorenvlei, evaluated the efficiency in his 28 hectares of apples and 6 hectares of pears and noticed that his employees were losing a lot of timedoing manual fruit counting. He knew that he needed to make the counting process more manageable and possibly introduce some technology that makes it possible to save time.

Solution

Rowayne looked out forsolutions in the realm of fruit counting and quickly came across Pixofarm. The Pixofarm app allowed the farmers at Verlorenvlei to take pictures of a sampleof trees in their orchard with just their smartphones and let the image processing technology count the fruits in just a few seconds. 

He also benefitted from the predictive algorithm that tracked the growth rate week by week and the predicted harvest at the end of the season. This information was crucial forhim in deciding whether irrigation was needed and in planning packaging. Also, the yield estimation tool simplified the planning around sales at the end ofthe season.

Rowayne and his employees had all the data on fruit count, fruit size, and yield estimation right athand, which saved time and a lot of money.

Results

Rowayne was very happy with the results he achieved with the Pixofarm app during the 2020 season. Even though it was hard to know how exactly to take the pictures of the apple trees initially, the customer support at Pixofarm was of great assistance. Rowayne is very excited to use Pixofarm in the seasons to come.

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