Visit us at World Ag Expo! Booth #I27 Ahmadi said runner cutting is not a step for strawberry growers to ignore, partic- ularly if they also hope to use automated technologies for harvesting. He said his work with the Strawberry Center at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, showed skip- needed to manage strawberry runners. He said that requires “a lot less capital than is required for harvest automation.” Ahmadi said developers are interested. “Investors need to spend more time in- vestigating these topics,” he said. “If some- one wanted to spend money and invest on this, it would make a huge savings for growers, and also it would help those har- vesting machines perform better.” The agricultural technology community, including researchers, growers, developers and investors, focuses on cost and return studies from the University of California, Davis, to influence their decisions on what crops to grow and what problems to solve, Ahmadi said. But he said more study is needed to “tell the whole story about the real challenges.” “(Developers) focus on the biggest num- ber for return on investment and focus all their money, resources and energy into de- veloping harvesting machines,” Ahmadi said. “They don’t know how harvesting is really happening in strawberries.” Strawberries Continued from Page 12
With automation slow to take hold, harvesting strawberries in California requires
a large workforce. Growers are also
concerned about high labor costs of managing strawberry runners early in the growing season, a key task for boosting fruit production.
ping this step reduces the efficacy of auto- mated strawberry harvesters later on. “One of the biggest challenges is hid- den from many people,” Ahmadi said. “The canopy is too dense and the ma- chine can’t work.” Other technologies are being tested in strawberry fields. Adam Stager, founder and CEO of Delaware-based TRIC Robotics, used grant money to plant an acre of strawber- ries before developing its flagship robot: a “car-sized Roomba” that uses UVC light to kill pests.
“A lot of people see a flashy problem and immediately start building robot arms instead of spending time in the field planting and harvesting strawberries like my team did,” Stager said. “It’s important to talk to the farmer about what problem they have.” When it comes to runner cutting, Stager said he sees the benefit in autonomous technology for this task, providing a solu- tion with “less technical risk” and human interaction with the plant. “You need to prune if you’re going to harvest well,” he said.
A test plot on a five- or 10-year timeline provides the necessary resources to make strides in new technology without relying on venture capital, Stager said. All players in agricultural technology need to “try to understand what’s really happening,” Ahmadi said. “We’re spend- ing millions on (automated) harvesters for more than 10 years, and so far, we’re not seeing these harvesting machines working in the strawberry fields.” (Caitlin Fillmore is a reporter based in Monterey County. She may be contacted at cslhfillmore@gmail.com.)
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