Blueberries: data-driven insights at every phenological stage
Every blueberry season comes with challenges. Blueberries are a labour-intensive crop and nearly impossible to count by hand.
We’re continually developing our GreenView system so we can combat the challenges with blueberries at every phenological stage.
Flowering stage
Blueberries flower over a number of weeks and flower count is extremely important for forecasting. Many farms will send 3 people into the field for 2 or 3 weeks to count blueberries, which is hugely labour-intensive and costly. GreenView AI can count at superhuman speed – accurately counting over 5,000 blueberry plants per day. Using our GreenView calculator during flowering will also give you your first forecast and insight into the season ahead.
Green fruit stage
Once the blueberry plant has flowered we want to know the conversion from flowers into green fruit. While some loss during this stage is inevitable we can help give you better insight on the process.
GreenView can help growers understand any loss between flower stage and green fruit stage – and then quantify green fruit out to final yield.
Coloured fruit stage
During the light purple and dark purple blueberry stage is another useful time when growers use the GreenView calculator. The short term forecasting tools are particularly useful to help coordinate the right number of pickers and update sales channels on projected harvest.
During the coloured fruit stage, growers can also look at variability with the GreenView map and identify areas of the crop with poorer conversion rate of fruit or smaller plants with less fruit overall. This can help identify issues with soil quality, fertiliser or orientation.
Ripe fruit stage and preparing for a new season
Growers can use GreenView to identify the slow down of ripening fruit. Once harvest is complete and all the blues have been picked it’s time for pruning. During the downtime between seasons, growers can use GreenView to do a total plant count and inventory to identify any areas of concern across the farm, including what plants you have lost during the season and what you need to replace.
Then a few weeks later – the season begins again! GreenView is there every step of the way to provide growers with the information they need to reduce costs, improve yield, and create a more efficient farm.
With great data comes great power
Inspired to see how you could use GreenView on your berry farm? Find out more or schedule a free demo today.