Bloomfield offers precise, objective and accurate plant-level health and performance assessments, continuously and at any scale.

Highly trained growers trust their eyes and experience to decide how best to manage their crops. When plant performance is perceived to be at risk or behind schedule due to water stress or nutrient deficiencies, the decision may be made to irrigate or fertilize. When crop health is viewed as vulnerable, at times during the season when pest and disease pressures are highest, pesticides are sprayed. And to ensure performance is on target it may be decided to thin thereby achieving a specific level of plant performance, production quality and ultimately yield.

After every application, treatment or adjustment is completed the impacts of those activities are observed and the health and performance of the crop is reassessed. The new assessment leads to new decisions, planning, and the next round of crop management activities. This process is fundamental and is based on repetitive and routine visual health and performance assessments.

Visual assessments impact crop management decisions made during the season, but they also impact planning for harvest and post-harvest needs. Preparing for the resources needed in the future depends on assessing plant health and performance throughout the season.

If plant performance is high and the quantity of yield is anticipated to be above previous expectations, additional labor, shipping, storage, packaging, materials and other resources can be planned efficiently. Alternatively, if the quantity of yield is likely to be lower than previously perceived, contingencies can be arranged and additional tonnes can be sourced. And in both cases, the ability to alert sales channels and other stakeholders as early as possible more precisely on yield expectations helps to minimize costs and maximize revenue.

Routine visual health and performance assessments of as many plants as possible by highly trained individuals impact every aspect of specialty crop farming.

Growers spend a lot of time and effort visually assessing the condition of their crops because of how important each assessment is to production. However, the subjective nature of human judgement will always lead to some inaccuracies. Human subjectivity leads to observations and assessments that can be different one day to the next, not to mention when two people are tasked with agreeing on what they see and the interpretation of those observations, which may result in management decisions that are rooted in disagreement.

Many growers utilize sampling techniques to assess the health and performance of their crop because of the limitations to the total number of plants an individual can observe and assess. Sampling particular plants or a particular zone in a given block for assessment purposes and judging the crops health and performance based on that limited sample size may lead to decisions and a set of management activities prescribed for an entire block that are not representative of the whole.

Visual assessments are time consuming and needed assessments are often not as routine or frequent as they could be. Inconsistent understanding of plant health and performance causes decisions to be made without all the necessary information. In the absence of a full, consistent and up-to-date understanding of plant health and performance conditions, decisions might be based solely on past experience and knowledge of a particular crop over time – this knowledge could be complemented by an objective, consistent and digital visual record.

Visual assessments are fundamental but they are time consuming and resource intensive as well as plagued by the challenges of human subjectivity, inconsistency, imprecision and small scale sampling.

Because plant health and performance is variable, human assessment abilities are limited, and precise health and performance assessments throughout the year are critical for effective specialty crop farming – Bloomfield’s automated service is objective, comprehensive, continuous and precise plant-level health and performance assessments that integrate directly into the production process.

Each plant is imaged and geolocated as often as the grower thinks necessary and the image data provides a foundation for descriptive analysis about each plant including; berry size, count, color; cluster size, count, color; shoot length, count, color; trunk size and count; leaf area and color; damage and disease detection; as well as cane and cordon measurements.

Analyses are continuously updated and revised as the plant evolves over the course of the year as well as across years and throughout the plant’s entire life. The result is an unprecedented level of continuous transparency about the health and performance of every plant, giving growers maximum control for precise and accurate production.