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13TSB_AgriFood: Developing innovative tools to manage risks associated with improving resource efficiency and fruit quality in substrate soft fruit

ReferenceBB/L017474/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor Dr Mark Else
Co-Investigators /
Co-Supervisors		 Professor Xiangming Xu
Institution East Malling Research
DepartmentScience
Funding typeResearch
Value (£) 201,866
StatusCompleted
TypeResearch Grant
Start date 01/03/2014
End date 31/01/2016
Duration23 months

Abstract

More efficient use of water, fertilisers and pesticides is vital to the future success of all UK agri-businesses. However, growers express concerns about adopting well-researched technologies for water- and fertiliser-saving because of potential negative effects on production when scaling-up, due to poor quality irrigation water, non-uniformity of commercial irrigation systems, the build-up of yield-depressing salts in the substrate and the associated risks of increased susceptibility to disease. A new 'closed loop' fertigation control unit will be developed to mitigate the risks associated with scaling-up this system to commercial substrate production. Multispectral and digital imaging systems will be developed to detect leaks, to monitor plant health, to predict fruit yields and to quantify berry quality parameters under the water- and fertiliser-saving strategies. Results will be validated against conventional but intensive measures of plant productivity and health in commercial strawberry varieties exposed to differing degrees of biotic and abiotic stresses. The outputs will lower fixed costs, improve resource use efficiency and crop quality, and reduce wastage via sustainable crop management.

Summary

Globally, agriculture and horticulture accounts for approximately 70% of all blue water abstracted and abstraction rates in many crop production areas are unsustainable. Future water security will be achieved through a combination of more efficient use of water or reduction of water loss and wastage. In the UK, the horticulture and potato industries rely on irrigation water to deliver economic yields of high quality produce with good shelf-life. However, new economically and environmentally sustainable production methods are urgently needed if the provision of a safe, healthy and nutritious food supply is to be achieved against a background of dwindling natural resources. The UK strawberry industry is a vital part of the UK's rural economy, worth £225 million in 2012. Irrigation and the addition of fertilisers (fertigation) is essential to produce the high quality berries demanded by retailers and consumers. Many growers are advised to irrigate to achieve 10-25% run-off to prevent the accumulation of damaging 'salts' within the substrate. Although over-irrigation and high fertiliser inputs can lead to excessive vegetative growth, increased disease susceptibility, lower marketable yields, poor organoleptic quality and a short shelf-life, many growers are reluctant to reduce water (and fertiliser) inputs due to the lack of suitable management tools and crop monitoring systems. Our aim is to develop and deliver a new innovative technology package that utilises a 'closed loop' PID fertigation control unit and digital and multispectral imaging systems to inform management practices and aid decision-making for commercial strawberry growers. The PID function on the new GP2 Advanced Logger and Controller will be used to impose consistent water deficits on commercial strawberry varieties grown in substrate on table-tops at EMR. Traditional but intensive measurements of physiological responses to water deficits or high ECs will be compared to digital and multispectralimaging approaches to determine their potential to remotely monitor and detect very early physiological responses to rootzone stresses. It will be important to ensure that the novel water-and fertiliser saving fertigation strategy does not alter resilience to yield-depressing powdery mildew and the potential of thermal imaging to detect very early infection in inoculated plants will be determined. The potential of the novel combination of technologies to improve on-farm management decision making will be tested on five commercial strawberry farms in the UK. The GP2 will be linked wirelessly to commercial fertigation rigs at each site using shortwave radio so that the water- and fertiliser-saving fertigation strategies developed using the PID function at EMR can be integrated in to large-scale strawberry production. The components of a novel multi-detector imaging system needed to monitor crop responses under the water- and fertiliser saving regimes to identify any negative effects on plant water relations, photosynthetic performance and powdery mildew susceptibility, to predict Class 1 yields and quantify changes in berry phytonutrient content will be identified. The prototype imaging system will then be tested on commercial farms to determine its potential to provide real-time data to farmers on crop health and productivity. The outputs from this project will improve the economic and environmental sustainability of UK soft fruit production by delivering greater water, fertiliser and pesticide use efficiencies, improved plant health, higher marketable yields, better fruit quality and a reduction in waste.

Impact Summary

The main economic and social benefits will be a significant boost to the economic performance of the UK's soft fruit and ancillary industries. Improved consistency of high quality fresh fruit with enhanced phytonutrient content and longer shelf-life, grown under environmentally sustainable production methods will benefit UK retailers and consumers. BerryGardens Growers Ltd will benefit from improved efficiencies during production, higher profits due to increased tonnages to sell and improved fruit quality and shelf-life potential. Delta-T Devices Ltd will benefit from a new market opportunity to sell GP2 units to commercial soft fruit growers; Eden Irrigation Consultancy Ltd will benefit from new business establishing effective and reliable wireless communication between the GP2-based PID unit and commercial fertigation rigs. The Technology Research Centre will increase their involvement with the soft fruit industry and by extending their current range of imaging capability to include multispectral imaging, they will also benefit from East Malling Research's expertise in phenotyping and analysis of fruit quality attributes such as the quantification of phytonutrient contents that will enable calibration of the imaging system. East Malling Research's research efforts into identifying QTL associated with beneficial traits will benefit from ability to impose consistent stresses, and the identification of novel imaging solutions to facilitate rapid measurement of important agronomic and fruit quality traits such as fruit size and berry phytonutrient content. The project consortium anticipates that the innovative technologies will also benefit the wider research and grower communities to provide substantial environmental and sociological opportunities for the UK horticultural industry. Benefits will include improved resource use efficiency, reduced pesticide use, improved yield predictions, extended shelf-life and reduced wastage in store and better fruit quality forconsumers. The technologies developed will be transferable to all high value horticulture sectors and will help to deliver-on farm resource use efficiencies. More efficient use of resources will enable growers to maintain or increase their cropping areas despite increasingly limited freshwater supplies and the rising costs of inorganic fertilisers. The improved water, fertiliser and pesticide use efficiencies that growers will be able to achieve using the project outputs will help to reduce the environmental impact of intensive horticultural production on groundwater availability and quality which is an increasing cause for concern in the major soft fruit growing regions and especially so in the south east. These benefits will be delivered over a 10-year timeframe. By becoming more efficient, the industry will become more competitive in the market place and this should deliver improved values for the buyers of the product. Producing higher yields of more flavoursome fruit with an improved phytonutrient content and extended shelf-life in an environmentally sustainable way should help to stimulate increased consumption which links into the government agenda on healthy eating to combat obesity and associated diseases. The project outputs would also deliver into produce assurance schemes such as LEAF Marque and the Red Tractor Scheme and retailers' own corporate sustainability schemes. Increasing resource efficiency and economic output from the same area of land will benefit the environment and water-related ecosystem services and impact positively on the people living within the producer communities. The ratio of inputs such as water, energy, pesticides and fertilisers will be lowered if higher yields of quality product can be produced from the same area of land. The development of these innovations could have a very large economic, environmental and social impact to the UK sustainability and health agenda for parties outside of the consortium.
Committee Research Committee A (Animal disease, health and welfare)
Research TopicsCrop Science, Plant Science, Soil Science
Research PriorityX – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative Innovate UK (TSB) [2011-2015]
Funding SchemeX – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme
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