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, and detrimental to the orchard productivity and the environment. This project will develop a Precision Variable Rate Spray (PVRS) machine, control software system, and new systems for measuring and assessing each individual trees' status. These components will be combined into products and services that will transform the tree fruit industry and deliver new levels of environmentally sustainable crop production, increasing efficiency and yield whilst lowering costs and environmental impacts. Integral to this approach is that every individual tree in the orchard will be assessed, its requirements calculated, and then treated with a tailored quantity of crop management products. This will reduce wastage and improve yields. Led by one of the UK's leading and forward-thinking agronomy companies, this project includes a range of high quality growers, a large top fruit marketing organisation, a software engineering company specialising in global positioning systems, a top fruit digital agronomy company, a crop phenotyping specialist, a robotics company, a horticultural engineering company, the UK's agricultural chemical regulation organisation, and three academic institutions specialising in agricultural engineering and robotics, computer science, economics, and horticultural agronomy. Working closely across the tree fruit industry's production chain ensures that the products and services developed during the project are designed for the grower and meet their requirements. The consortium's network allows us to engage with the wider fruit industry. The project will showcase the products and services to the horticulture sector with a range of knowledge exchange activities and field demonstrations. During the project we will assess the new spray system's benefits relative to conventional spraying, and report on the economic and environmental advantages of investing in Precision Variable Rate Spraying. At the end of the project, UK growers will have access to the most advanced and efficient tree fruit crop management system available, and understand the environmental and economic benefits of using the system.

"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 and uniform apple orchards in the UK, with much greater variability in poorer orchards. Larger scale within-orchard variability and inter-annual bienniality also contribute to poor performance. In this project, we shall develop precision dosing orchard foliar spraying system to improve the uniformity of orchards and greatly increase their economic performance, using apple as an exemplar. Current practice is to spray whole orchards at the same dose regardless of tree structure or crop load. The equipment will apply precision doses according to need to optimise performance. The performance of poorer performing trees will be increased towards that of the best and the tendency for out of sync tree-to-tree biennial bearing minimised. IP will be protected and the system sold internationally, creating a new substantive UK business contributing to the UK economy. The technology will have application for the wide range of spray applications to tree fruits for crop protection and crop management worldwide. The precision orchard mapping technologies will have additional wide application for other methods of crop management and Agri Decision Support Systems (AgriDSS) worldwide. This new technology will have substantive impacts on the UK apple industry making a step change in productivity and competitiveness and allowing the UK industry to increase production. Keywords: Precision orchard spraying, tree fruit production, apple production, crop scanning and mapping, Decision Support System"