Crop Scanner May Help Citrus Growers Fight Greening Disease
John Simpson | July 29, 2016With citrus growers trying to save their groves in the wake of the deadly greening disease, a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researcher has developed a technique that could help growers answer a vexing question—why so much fruit is dropping to the ground prematurely.
While there is no known cure for greening, it is important to know its locations and how much damage the disease caused at those sites so growers can mitigate the disease, says Wonsuk “Daniel” Lee, UF/IFAS professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
One indicator of the severity of damage is the number of dropped fruit. The other is how much the fruit has decayed once on the ground.
Lee and his team are developing methods that will allow a grower to scan many acres quickly and accurately to estimate the severity of citrus fruit drop at any given time.
Unfortunately, greening has exacerbated the degree of fruit drop, says Fritz Roka, UF/IFAS associate professor of food and resource economics and a co-author of the study led by Lee. Some growers have reported crop losses of 50% due to premature drop.
"While everyone believes the drop situation is related to greening, we don’t have a clear reason why the fruit is dropping,” Roka says. Temperature, wind, humidity, rainfall, citrus greening and other factors all may play a role.
To determine the extent and locations of damaged citrus, the research team devised an algorithm that helps cameras detect decayed fruit. This research follows a 2014 study in which Lee found an algorithm to accurately find and count fruit that had dropped from trees in citrus groves.