Hort Innovation: Geospatial Mapping of Australian Vegetable Crops – Pilot

Opportunity for

• Delivery partners to submit a Request for Proposal (RFP) to
  • Develop and validate a fit-for-purpose methodology for mapping commercial vegetable crops across two pilot 
    regions in Australia.
  • Assess the feasibility, limitations and requirements for scaling the methodology to a national vegetable crop map.
  • Demonstrate the practical value of vegetable crop mapping by identifying priority use cases and decision-making applications for industry and growers.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge

The Vegetable Strategic Investment Plan 2022-2026 is located here.
Hort Innovation and the Australian horticulture industry are increasingly focused on improving access to reliable, spatially enabled data to support more informed decision-making, industry planning, and investment prioritisation. 

While significant progress has been made in crop mapping for perennial industries, such as through the Australian Tree Crop Map, comparable spatial intelligence for vegetable production remains limited. This gap limits the industry’s ability to understand regional production concentration, crop rotation patterns and supply volatility, reducing the effectiveness of planning, benchmarking and risk management at both industry and grower levels. 
Beyond industry planning and benchmarking, accurate vegetable crop spatial data also has potential longer-term applications in areas such as biosecurity preparedness, emergency and disaster response, and supply chain resilience — capabilities that are increasingly important to industry and government. 

At the same me, advancements in remote sensing, geospatial data integration, and agricultural analytics present a strong opportunity to develop accurate and scalable crop mapping solu ons for vegetable systems. However, vegetables present unique challenges compared to tree crops, including high seasonality, shorter production cycles, and frequent crop rotation, all of which can limit the reliability of traditional mapping approaches and increase delivery complexity. 

Current opportunity

The project described in this RFP aims to build on existing horticulture spatial data investments to test a fit-for-purpose approach for vegetable crop mapping. Through a targeted pilot, the program will improve understanding of how geospatial technologies and data sources can be integrated and applied within vegetable systems, while ensuring that industry needs, data privacy, and practical implementation considerations are central to design and delivery. 

The objectives of the services being sought are to:
1) Develop and validate a fit-for-purpose methodology for mapping commercial vegetable crops across two pilot regions in Australia
2) Assess the feasibility, limitations and requirements for scaling the methodology to a national vegetable crop map
3) Demonstrate the practical value of vegetable crop mapping by identifying priority use cases and decision-making applications for industry and growers

Find out more and apply through Tenders.net here. RFP applications close 3pm AEST on 29th July 2026.

Opportunity background

Horticulture Innovation Australia (Hort Innovation) is a not-for-profit, grower-owned Research and Development Corporation (RDC) for Australia’s $18.4 billion horticulture industry. Hort Innovation invests around $170 million in research and development (R&D) and marketing programs annually to provide benefit to industry and the wider community.

Previous and related work (Project codes AS23000 and AS20003) has focused on developing national-scale spatial datasets for hor culture, particularly in tree crops and protected cropping systems. These projects have established foundational methodologies, demonstrating the feasibility of mul-industry collaboration and provide a strong technical base for extending spatial intelligence into vegetable systems. 

This project should be targeted to vegetable levy payers and vegetable industry stakeholders and value chain members.