SBIR-STTR Award

Numerous challenges face the Florida and U.S. citrus industries including global market pressure urban and environmental pressures labor issues and emerging diseases and pests thus underscoring the need for new production approaches. Over the last decade over 200000 acres of Florida citrus production has been lost due to the citrus canker eradication program and citrus greening known as HLB. HLB is now considered endemic in Florida and hundreds of thousands of acres are in step decline with minimal hope of finding remediation solutions. Long term hope rests on finding HLB resistant varieties and developing advanced management strategies that can control the psyllid population repel them from groves and manage trees in an optimal economic framework. One approach being considered is Advanced Production Systems (APS) that use high density semi-dwarfed trees and open hydroponics with optimized nutrient and water availability which accelerates plant growth. When combined with HLB tolerant rootstocks the concept seeks to increase yield production per acre while simultaneously shortening the time to return on investment which means that grove life can be shortened by disease pressure and still remain viable economically. However this new grove architecture will require new equipment systems to manage production and harvesting. The system concept proposed will offer a broad range of production and harvesting implements. In this Phase I project we will advance a strategic aspect of fruit harvesting which will help improve harvesting performance quality of yield and provide growers with valuable geo- spatial data that can be used to improve production management. It is proposed in this Phase I to develop and in-line fruit quality and yield monitor that will be integrated into the vertical lift elevator on the APS Over the Top Citrus Harvester (APS-OTCH) that has been explored in previous Phase I and Phase II projects. This technology would be an add-on option that would monitor fruit harvest yield/quality and DGPS location for either the mass harvester (juice) or selective robotic harvester (fresh) that is being developed by GeoSpider Inc. The technology will measure fruit mass flow directly by monitoring elevator drive torque/motor pressure. In addition fruit count size and volume will be estimated using optical based sensors that can also provide information about fruit coloration and can be used for fruit elimation via an in-line fruit seperator. The impact of citrus greening on fruit color size and flavor quality all suggest that elimating poor quality fruit in the field will improve pack out and reduce hauling costs. In future work additional sensors could be added to this system to detect disease presence such as citrus canker and blackspot. An experimental prototype of the OTCH elevator will be fabricated and sensors integrated with a controller to collect sensor and DGPS data. Appropriate experimental methods will be implemented to calibrate sensor data for yield and quality estimation and then to evaluate the system performance in a laboratory setting. In the planned future Phase II project we will integrate the various components from Phase I projects into a fresh citrus harvester comprised of multiple arms and material handling with fruit yield and quality monitoring. The Phase II prototype can then be tested at the UF APS grove in Citra FL.