With harvest underway for some—and right around the corner for others—almond and pistachio growers are already planning for next year’s purchasing and tree replacement needs. Traditionally, this means hours spent walking row to row, counting trees with a clicker. But growers working with Ceres Imaging now have a more efficient option: our new Varietal Tree Count tool.
The Varietal Tree Count tool tallies trees by nut variety across an entire orchard, quickly generating an inventory of all trees by type. With the report, growers can efficiently assess replant needs, saving the time and expense of manual tree counts. The automatically generated inventories can also be used for other management assessments, such as analysis of yield performance by variety.
"Counting and planning for replants by hand is expensive and labor-intensive," says almond grower Tim Venn, who owns Venn Farms. "Ceres Imaging's Varietal Tree Count is a much more efficient way to plan for next season."
The Varietal Tree Count builds on previous tree count tools that did not distinguish trees by variety. True to our rigorous validation process, this latest product release comes after significant research and field testing, including a limited rollout to trial customers who helped us ensure the technology is reliable and accurate for pistachio and almond growers.
“What we want to do is get farmers get all the way to the answers," says Ceres Imaging CEO Ashwin Madgavkar. "When we combine our long experience working with tree nut growers and deep expertise in high-accuracy imagery, we can produce tools that actually serve growers' bottom line."
The tool is available today to pistachio and almond growers of all sizes with orchards under 200 trees per acre and older than two years. We're also offering the tool on a trial basis to select walnut and pecan growers—as well as tree fruit growers,
Here's how it works:
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Ceres Imaging flies your fields to capture imagery.
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The Varietal Tree Count tool tallies by variety and identifies missing trees that need to be replaced—as well as unhealthy existing trees that may need to be replaced.
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Growers use the final report on number of trees needed by variety to place nursery orders for the upcoming season.
Already got your new trees? Be sure to follow best practices for planting. We recommend this guide by our friend David Doll, the Almond Doctor.
Example of Varietal Tree Count report:
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