fbpx
Print this page
Monday, 06 February 2023 16:25

Tracking down the ghost vines

Written by  Staff Reporters
Photo Credit: Paul Sutherland Photography. Photo Credit: Paul Sutherland Photography.

New Zealand agritech startup Cropsy Technologies is leading a $1.3 million project to help growers identify and replace grapevines that are missing, dead, dying or otherwise unproductive.

Cropsy has been awarded $534,000 through the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI’s) Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures (SFF Futures) fund and a $200k AGMARDT Agribusiness Innovation grant to lead the project, called You know I can’t harvest your Ghost Vines: Vineyard-scale monitoring of unproductive vines.

Cropsy Head of Product and Innovation Dr Gareth Hill says the project will develop tools to help growers understand the health and productivity of every vine in their vineyards in order to identify missing, dead, dying or otherwise unproductive grapevines.

“These vines receive all the labour, water, and other vineyard inputs that other vines do without contributing to the overall productivity of the vineyard.”

Cropsy’s current vision system can measure the current state of grapevines. By also measuring and analysing the state of every vine and its neighbours over time, the Ghost Vines project will enable the diagnosis of declining productivity and disease at the earliest possible stage, says Gareth. “We are building up a ‘patient history’ of all the vines in a vineyard.”

More like this

Farmers struggle with water and feed shortages

The drought in western parts of the North Island is reaching crisis point with many farmers from Northland to Taranaki having to truck in water and feed for their stock at great expense.