PRECISION FARMING APPLICATIONS IN FLORIDA CITRUS

Abstract

A cooperative effort between researchers, manufacturers, and growers has been investigating precisionfarming applications in Florida citrus. Citrus yields, based on the location of volume-based containers, were mappedusing a conventional fruit-loading truck, manual harvesters (> 99% of Florida citrus is manually harvested), andGIS/GPS components. These maps were overlaid on geo-referenced aerial photographs of the tree canopies. Two fruitweighing systems were mounted on a fruit-loading truck and integrated with the GIS/GPS components to investigatemapping weight-based yields. Results to date indicate the truck-mounted weighing systems were within 1 to 6% ofcertified scale weights on 20 t loads of fruit. Electronically recording harvester identity is being integrated with yieldmapping to make the entire system more reliable and attractive to harvesters and growers.