Deploying Artificial Intelligence to Develop Precision Soil Health Assessments for Perennial Fruit Crops

Moonshot Award

Proposal Development

Abstract

Healthy vineyard and orchard soils are needed to sustain the $7.2 billion apple and grape industries in NYS. Improving and maintaining soil health in orchard and vineyard soils requires a unique approach for these perennial fruit production environments, including determining appropriate soil health benchmarks, documenting effective management strategies and impacts from historical management, as well as developing new tools for reducing uncertainty and costs of soil health assessment. Initial benchmarking of soil health in apple orchards across NYS identified detrimental effects of post-emergent herbicide use and positive impacts of organic matter amendments.

Ongoing work is focused on benchmarking vineyard soil health in NYS, including a comparison of relevant management practices in varying grape production systems, e.g., V. vinifera versus north american and hybrid grape species. Next steps also include an SCRI project that builds on Moonshot funded efforts to develop highly spatially resolved baseline soil health maps at a reduced cost through use of MIR-DRIFTS spectroscopy, pXRF, and in situ soil compaction and moisture assessment. 

These maps will be used to support AI assisted modeling of cropload management in apple orchards in combination with aboveground data collected via autonomous sensing ground and aerial robots.