innov8.ag
Jan 7, 20202 min
Updated: Jun 18, 2020
Learn about our recent travels!
In Washington State, every orchard grower contributes a few pennies per box of apples/cherries/pears shipped toward industry research. Once a year, the growers in the Tree Fruit Research Commission meet with university researchers & industry entrepreneurs to review existing and future technology projects. Recent tech projects range from genome research to disease modeling & pollination challenges. Current projects include orchard robotics and tree sap analysis. Would you expect tree sap analysis to be interesting? Well, Oregon State University & Washington State University researchers are digging in to measure the speed of heat traveling through a tree trunk to determine water uptake for a tree....pretty cool! Stay tuned for updates on Innov8.ag collaboration with this group!
Our innov8.ag team had the opportunity to participate in this years Spokane Ag Expo. The themes from this event were equipment, data collection, universities, community colleges, and farming community members.
A perfect example of all of these factors coming together was a meeting Innov8.ag had with a company that’s looking to manage costs, particularly the costs of pumping water to 6,000+ acres of potatoes, corn, and mint. With annual electricity costs of over $1 million a year just for irrigation, there's a strong interest in leveraging data to optimize water time - with resultant impact on their bottom line as well as being good for the environment.
Washington State University Extension hosts regular Next-Gen Tree Fruit grower meetings for young growers, and Innov8.ag trekked up to Wenatchee to hear growers share first-hand how they're using technology to improve productivity and profits in their orchards. Participants in this event included the 20's & 30's crowd representing some of the state's largest orchards including Zirkle, McDougall & others. Lots of good learnings for us here, where growers shared successes & challenges to data access & insights. This is a great forum for us, as it brings together progressive minds where we can invest to enable research & insights.
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