H.L. Hutchinson Limited

The Sustainable Nitrogen Application Project (SNAP) will develop techniques for precision application of nitrogen in commercial apple orchards. Standard industry practice is to apply a uniform rate of fertiliser across an orchard or vineyard at set times in the season. However, different trees and different regions in the orchard will have different requi...

With Innovate-UK support, Messium Limited, in collaboration with H L Hutchinson Limited, UK Agri-Tech Centre, and The Allerton Project, will develop the first dedicated optimal nitrogen recommendation platform that combines first-of-a-kind hyperspectral imagery with rapid AI/ML crop modelling tools to provide tailored nitrogen application analytics and in...

**Overview**: This project focuses on developing a technology-verified carbon insetting scheme for Cranswick to 1) reduce carbon emissions associated with their agricultural supply chain and 2) quantify biodiversity changes. The new scheme will provide a financial incentive for Cranswick's producer base by planting wildflowers and/or flower-rich grasses, ...

Apple scab and downy mildew are devastating diseases of apple orchards and vineyards, respectively. They are spread by airborne spores and, if left untreated, cause significant losses to growers. Currently, growers control these diseases by frequent applications of fungicides (up to 15 treatments annually in apples and 10 in vineyards), which are costly t...

The agricultural industry is undergoing a transformative revolution, leveraging new technologies and knowledge to increase yields while dramatically reducing environmental impacts, lowering production costs, and reducing waste. Plants have evolved many capabilities to detect and respond to stress long before visible symptoms appear, yet current agronomic ...

Current tree fruit production applies crop management products uniformly across each orchard, however, orchards exhibit substantial variation across them and between trees. Even neighbouring trees have very different growth and crop loads. Treating all trees uniformly regardless of their size, density, crop load, or health limits yield, is inefficient, an...

End-of-life apple orchards are currently managed using the environmentally unsustainable practice of grubbing and burning. In this project we will investigate the use of pyrolysis as an alternative more sustainable approach. Pyrolysis converts biomass to biochar in a clean, heat-generating process. This stabilises the carbon effectively removes CO2, avoid...

Feeding 9.8 billion people in 2050 in a climate change context will depend on our skills to keep soils alive. Food production is directly correlated with soil health. To manage and improve soil health, farmers need reliable information about the chemical, physical and biological properties of their soils. There are methods available to assay soil nutrient...

"Today, the majority of farmers spray fungicides prophylactically on crops to minimise risk and insure against disease ingress. Most farmers, or their consultants, spend hours inspecting crops but can't easily predict what incubating (invisible) infection is already in the crop or what may start to develop as a result of increasing pathogen presence in th...

"There is substantive tree-to-tree variability in tree structure (size, density) and crop load and quality in tree fruit orchards which are the major causes of less than optimal, often poor, overall yield and quality. Previous work in Innovate UK project 101405 showed that tree-to-tree variability in yield ranged from 2-3 fold in the six most productive a...

Phoma stem canker is a damaging disease of oilseed rape in the UK, leading to yield losses > £100M p.a. despite the use of fungicides. This disease is caused by two related pathogens: Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa. However, current control of the disease focuses only on L. maculans. Recent work showed that L. biglobosa can cause substantial yiel...

Phoma stem canker, caused by the fungal pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans, is a damaging disease on oilseed rape in the UK, causing annual yield losses > £100M despite use of fungicides. With recent loss of the most effective fungicides through EU legislation and predicted global warming, potential yield losses will increase. Use of host resistance to contr...