Cracking the data to
mitigate fruit cracking

Advanced sensing and data technologies for real-time monitoring and fruit cracking risk assessment

Fruit cracking is a costly and persistent challenge for farmers, with limited options for mitigation measures. This physiological phenomenon primarily arises during the pre-harvest stage, compromising fruit appearance, allowing water loss and pathogen invasion, decreasing fruit shelf life, marketability and causing a significant yield loss worldwide. 

The rising global demand for increased food production, consumer preferences for larger and sweeter fruits, and climate instability resulting in exacerbation of the fruit cracking occurrence, highlight the importance of addressing this challenge.

CrackSense steps in!

CrackSense will progress through multiple development stages to shift from manual monitoring to high-throughput, real-time, proximal, and remote sensing tools integrated with advanced agri-environmental monitoring. The data gathered from experiments will be scaled up and applied at several pilot sites across two continents, enabling the prediction of fruit cracking intensity at plot, regional and year level.

pomegranate
CrackSense in numbers
Types of fruit
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Countries
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Continents
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Pedoclimatic regions
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CrackSense Network of Partners and Demonstrations

Yield losses along the entire production chain endanger the challenge of feeding the world. Climate changes, characterized by extreme climatic events with increased incidence and strength, dramatically increase yield losses. A significant source of yield losses is fruit cracking, which has dramatically increased in the last two decades, probably due to climate change. CrackSense embraces Smart Farming concepts to mitigate fruit yield losses due to cracking. It combines Information and Communication Technologies into agriculture, leading to a Third Green Revolution. CrackSense introduces multimodal sensor data in the experimental portfolio of agriculture and implements data fusion and Machine Learning on edge units for real-time information, potentially providing a cyber-physical system.  

Victor Alchanatis, D.Sc.

Researcher Institute of Agricultural Engineering, The Agricultural Research Organisation Of Israel - The Volcani Centre

Avi Sadka, Ph,D.

Professor of plant sciences
The Agricultural Research Organisation
Of Israel - The Volcani Centre

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