Yield sensing technologies for perennial and annual horticultural crops: a review

Abstract

Yield maps provide a detailed account of crop production and potential revenue of a farm. This level of details enables a range of possibilities from improving input management, conducting on-farm experimentation, or generating profitability map, thus creating value for farmers. While this technology is widely available for field crops such as maize, soybean and grain, few yield sensing systems exist for horticultural crops such as berries, field vegetable or orchards. Nevertheless, a wide range of techniques and technologies have been investigated as potential means of sensing crop yield for horticultural crops. This paper reviews yield monitoring approaches that can be divided into proximal, either direct or indirect, and remote measurement principles. It reviews remote sensing as a way to estimate and forecast yield prior to harvest. For each approach, basic principles are explained as well as examples of application in horticultural crops and success rate. The different approaches provide whether a deterministic (direct measurement of weight for instance) or an empirical (capacitance measurements correlated to weight for instance) result, which may impact transferability. The discussion also covers the level of precision required for different tasks and the trend and future perspectives. This review demonstrated the need for more commercial solutions to map yield of horticultural crops. It also showed that several approaches have demonstrated high success rate and that combining technologies may be the best way to provide enough accuracy and robustness for future commercial systems.

Looking behind occlusions: A study on amodal segmentation for robust on-tree apple fruit size estimation

“…Another application of fruit detection systems consists in mapping the predicted yield. These maps allow to analyse how the yield is distributed throughout the orchard in order to optimize the management based on the spatial variability (Longchamps et al, 2022). Automated harvesting is another field of application of fruit detection systems.…”

Combining thermal imaging and soil water content sensors to assess tree water status in pear trees

“…Precision agriculture uses information obtained from temporal or spatial data to address variability within the orchard, improve the productivity and quality of horticultural products, and enhance resource use efficiency and sustainability ( Zhang et al., 2002 ). The application of sensors, remote sensing, information systems, and improved machinery are important for achieving low-input and high-efficiency horticulture ( Zude-Sasse et al., 2021 ; Longchamps et al., 2022 ). Since irrigation is tightly associated with tree growth and productivity and water is an indispensable limited resource, technological tools that assess tree water status can improve irrigation scheduling and water use efficiency, avoiding over-irrigation or applying undesirable water stress ( Gonzalez-Dugo et al., 2013 ; Blanco and Kalcsits, 2021 ).…”

UAV-LiDAR-based 3D Mapping of Apple Orchards and Automatic Georeferencing of Segmented Apple Tree Locations

“…This information is then used to determine appropriate management strategies [1], [2]. Precision agriculture has been extensively utilized in field crops such as corn, soybeans, and grains [3]. In particular, Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs) are particularly useful for time-series observations and can acquire data with high spatial resolution.…”

“…Duan et al propose that by linking geographic information with rice fields and dividing the fields into grids, the variation in NDVI over the growing season can be captured, enabling yield prediction to be achieved in each divided area [6]. Although precision agriculture has been extensively used in field crops such as corn, soybeans, and grains detection, it has not been widely adopted in horticultural crops such as berries, field vegetables, and orchards [3]. In horticulture, quality analysis is more significant than in other crops.…”