A CITRUS nursery has reimagined its entire business operation by utilising remote sensing technology.
Golden Grove Nursery at Torbanlea, Queensland, is one of Australia's leading commercial citrus production nurseries.
The business has been involved in a strategic levy-funded project entitled "Digital remote monitoring to improve horticulture's environmental performance", in conjunction with Hort Innovation and the Australian Government's National Landcare Program.
This has seen it install a new innovative irrigation control system, remote camera monitors, new environmental measuring devices and redesigning growing media for horticultural tree stock.
The technology sees data uploaded to the cloud and presented live on a screen in the office, which removes the need to manually record the data in spreadsheets.
The monitoring sensors give the nursery staff an overview of the crop requirements through the different growth stages and weather events.
The strategic partnership aims to encourage adoption of technology which helps Australian horticultural businesses improve decision-making skills, production efficiencies, optimal labour use and environmental performance.
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Fourth-generation citrus grower and Golden Grove director Wayne Parr said with a firm focus on innovation, the business is incredibly excited to be a part of the project.
"It will provide Golden Grove Nursery with the tools and knowledge to implement the latest technology and trendsetting ideas to transform our growing processes," Mr Parr said.
"A key goal for this project is to improve our water management processes, reduce the overheads of water usage and decrease the environmental impact through runoff catchment and recycling.
Mr Parr has had more than 40 years as a commercial grower of horticultural and agriculture crops. Golden Grove Nursery has been family owned since 1988.
The production nursery is a dominant supplier in the fruit tree industry and holds exclusive licenses with breeders and importers to produce protected and Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) cultivars for supply to commercial orchards.
To date, the business has excelled in the production and supply of citrus trees to the citrus industry.
However, production has been designed to effectively capture the full potential of changing market demands for a diverse range of crops, including avocado, macadamia, and ornamental plant production.
The production nursery currently supplies more than 200,000 nursery trees per year (with the capacity to provide 240,000 nursery trees) into the Queensland citrus industry and other fruit tree industries.
"Improving labour efficiency is another critical area of focus; by adopting innovative technology, we hope to create more streamlined nursery operations and growing practises," Mr Parr said.
"These new processes will help to reduce crop growth cycle times and provide commercial growers with a higher quality uniform crop.
As a result of this project, we have reimagined our entire business operation and are incredibly excited to reap the rewards of investing in innovative technology, creating a thriving, sustainable business.
- Wayne Parr, director, Golden Grove Nursery, Qld.
"Since starting this project, we have already made big changes. We installed a free-standing weather station within the shade house to monitor the microclimate."
"There are pH, EC and Redox sensors installed in the dam and drain to monitor water quality.
"We've also installed four networked cameras to monitor dam overflow, pest activity via sticky traps, stem length and crop growth.
"Another significant change was the installation of a leachate monitor to identify nutrient runoff, weight scales and soil moisture sensors to measure the growing media moisture content and the crop water use.
Mr Parr said since incorporating new information and communication technology into the day-to-day processes, Golden Grove has begun to optimise its productivity and labour efficiency.
"As a result of this project, we have reimagined our entire business operation and are incredibly excited to reap the rewards of investing in innovative technology, creating a thriving, sustainable business," he said.
The project involves collaborators including Hort Innovation, Applied Horticultural Research, Freshcare, Hitachi Consulting, Landcare and industry bodies Greenlife Industry Australia, Ausveg, the Australian Banana Growers' Council, the Australian Macadamia Society and Growcom.
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