Description
The Applied Agricultural Remote Sensing Centre (AARSC) research team from the University of New England has been developing a mobile application, Crop Count that will provide avocado growers with up-to-date high resolution satellite imagery that is able to be calibrated for seasonal yield estimation. Geoimage was tasked with providing 31cm multispectral and pan sharpened imagery for use on the Crop Count app.
Prof. Andrew Robson (AARSC Director), Dr Moshiur Rahman (research scientist from the AARSC) and the AARSC team have been working on this project since 2019. The Worldview-3 multispectral (1.24m) imagery was purchased and pansharpened by Geoimage to 31cm. The pansharpened imagery allowed a more accurate application of the developed methodology to deliver accurate yield forecasting at the orchard level as well as providing yield, fruit size and tree health maps to avocado growers all via the mobile app.
The benefits of having an accurate yield forecast include major cost and time savings, farmers can forward sell and better plan labor and storage requirements for harvest.