Wine Australia: In-field fruit maturity measurement technology – commercialisation opportunity

Opportunity for

• Agritech software providers, product developers, innovators and commercial partners interested in commercialising in-field fruit maturity measurement technology to combine with existing or new platforms.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge:

Effective scheduling of harvesting and winery intake depends on accurate knowledge of fruit maturity. At best, this is currently assessed by manual sampling of a few bunches at a few locations in a block, typically with significant variation across a block. The consequence can be inaccurate prediction of whole-block fruit maturity and limited geospatial resolution of fruit maturity parameters. Further, in-field assessment is normally restricted to sugar maturity, other measures requiring laboratory analysis. Every winery faces this problem every vintage.

Current opportunity:

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Wine Australia are seeking engagement from AgriTech software providers, products developers, innovation, and commercial partners interested in technology for measuring fruit maturity in field. There is a significant opportunity to co-develop products and services using the technology.

Progress has been made validating the technology in the field:

• Testing currently underway on commercial vineyard blocks in Mclaren Vale on three varieties, including full row scans.

Opportunity background:

In-field fruit maturity measurement technology features and applications so far.

Non-contact, on-the-go assessment of fruit composition can be achieved using chemometrics with a vehicle mounted spectrometer/camera instrument, capturing data by simply driving through the vineyard. The scale of field assessment determined by the time and wishes of the vineyard manager.

• Spectrometer collects reflectance spectra of vines
• GPS monitors location
• Automated chemometrics occurs on device, at farm base or (preferably) in the cloud:
  • Spectra classified as fruit, canopy etc. using bespoke algorithm
  • Fruit spectra extracted and chemometrics performed
  • Sugar maturity determined
• Further parameters (e.g. anthocyanin content, pH, titratable acidity, organic acids etc.) can also be determined using the same dataset
• Potential for berry condition (shrivel, disease) to be determined
• Raw or processed data uploaded to cloud service
• Georeferenced fruit maturity and composition data provided
• Maps or per block summaries, can be delivered into any ag-tech online platform.