The creation of the Harvest Manager 300

I have spent the last year looking into how Kiwifruit growers in NZ can manage their orchards more efficiently. 
 

I have been working in orchards in the Waikato since I was Thirteen. Since then I have performed many jobs from general orchard labour, such as pruning, to quality control supervising at harvest.
The traditional orchard consists of blocks of long rows made of small rectangle bays. These bays are traditionally 5m long and 3m in width.

The average height of the canopy is generally between 180-190cm from the orchard floor.  However, when it gets closer to harvest, the canopy can sag in areas with high fruit load down to 170cm. This is about face level for an average man of 170cm. The diagram also displays the height of the average women. 

NZ doesn't have the land mass to compete in global markets on fruit production. Therefore we compete by producing higher value fruit. This has caused a shift in growers focusing on producing high fruit numbers to producing high value fruit. This has seen the emergence of  higher value, sweeter fruit varieties and a change in the way the industry players its growers. 

This has resulted in NZ dominating global markets, even though other countries out-produce us.
This can be clearly seen in the comparison of NZ to Italy. 

The industry currently determines the value of a fruit based on a fruit's Dry Matter.
Just over 80% of every fruit is made up of water. The remainder is the actual substance of the fruit, which is referred to as Dry Matter(DM). 

Dry Matter is made up of  proteins, minerals, fibres and also the sugars and acids that add to the fruit's taste.
The higher the DM, the higher the level of sugars.  

Dry Matter is used to predict the sugar levels at the time a customer purchases a kiwifruit. This is due to the sugars being stored as starch for much of the fruit's development. The starch only begins to be converted into sugars as the fruit ripens. Due to the fruit continuing to ripen once it has been picked it is difficult to predict the sugar levels in a fruit at the time it is purchased. As the level of DM in a fruit remains constant from when it is picked to the time it is purchased, the level of DM  can be used to predict the sugar levels at the time it is purchased. The general rule being the % of DM  -  3% will give you the sugar % at time it is purchased.

Zespri is the largest kiwifruit marketing company in the world.  Zespri has many methods of paying growers for their fruit,
including general fruit payments, compensation payments and perhaps most importantly, incentive bonuses.  Zespri uses incentive bonuses to encourage growers to produce fruit the market desires. In this case, sweeter, higher value fruit. This is determined by fruit Dry Matter. The largest of these bonuses are the taste bonus (TZG) and the early start bonus.

If a grower picks their fruit earlier in the season  they receive a bonus for putting Zespri's fruit on the shelf before competitors. There is also a bonus for having fruit picked later in the season as it keeps fruit on the shelves longer. This also acts as a compensation payment to compensate growers for their fruit loosing quality from being in storage longer.

The time of the season a grower decides to pick  their fruit can greatly increase the gross profit their orchard make. This is referred to as Orchard Gate Return (OGR).
The fruit in an orchard will receive varying time and taste bonuses depending on the time it is picked. This can be seen in the above and below diagrams. 

Currently an independent company called Eurofins performs a compulsory DM test in every orchard before they are cleared to pick. This is to ensure an orchards fruit will meet a minimum taste standard to be sold under the Zespri logo. This taste standard requires all fruit picked to be over 16.9% DM.
Each test costs a grower $300 to perform. This involves Eurofins coming in to an orchard and taking a sample of 90 fruit. The sample is then taken to a laboratory and deconstructed to find out the levels of DM, sugars, firmness, skin colour, and much more.  

The above image displays the information a simplified Eurofins test would display. from the diagram we can see their is a strong correlation between fruit DM and fruit taste.(TZG) 

A grower has to a have a $300 Eurofins test performed for each maturity area of their orchard. A maturity area is any area with vines of varying ages or growing different varieties of fruit.  If an orchardist has 3 maturity areas it would cost them $900 to get their orchard DM tested.