High throughput real-time monitoring and prediction of fruit cracking by utilising and upscaling sensing and digital data technologies

Fruit cracking is a peel disorder, limiting fruit quality and yield. The phenomenon occurs mainly in the pre-harvest stage and affects many types of fruit. External conditions like climatic and environmental conditions, and orchard management play important roles in increasing the incidence of the phenomenon, this CrackSense will condict reasers in IL, FR, DE, LT, EL. CrackSense aims to address the problem of fruit cracking in citrus, pomegranate, table grapes and sweet cherries by developing and upscaling sensing technologies that will provide real-time sensor data through piloting activities. The sensor data collected will be upscaled into EU-wide data sets which will encompass Earth Observation Data (provided by Copernicus, e.g., Sentinel) and other data sets reflecting on environmental conditions. This data will be used to monitor agricultural production of the studied crops and enable farmers and growers’ efficient management of their resources and sustainability of their actions. By improving the agricultural production of these crops, CrackSense will as well help in creating a model for other agricultural crops. Furthermore, CrackSense will address the critical need for efficient and real-time monitoring of agri-environmental conditions because these conditions have a great influence on agricultural production. By deploying sensing technologies, CrackSense will enable high throughput assessment of cracking incidence risk at fruit, tree, field, and regional scale to mitigate the negative effects of the cracking phenomenon. By reducing 1/2 of the yield losses due to cracking, the use of the Integrated CrackSense Solution will result in 50% higher financial gain for farmers and growers. Integrated CrackSense Solution will enable farmers and growers to optimise their cost efficiency and generate pathways for more income. Fostering complementarities between partners will enable us to fulfil our goals to bring state-of-the-art CrackSense Solution to end users.