Fruit Growing

Digitalization in Fruit Growing

Import competition, rising costs, thin margins, and a shrinking supply of available labor – fruit growing has been under economic pressure for years. In this situation, what helps isn't tech enthusiasm, but concrete decision support: When does irrigation need to happen, when is frost a risk, where in the orchard do problems appear first? That's exactly where we come in.

The Challenge

Many small and medium-sized fruit-growing operations today still work largely on experience and visual inspection. That works – but it costs time, which is scarce, and it's hard to translate into concrete figures when it comes to investment decisions, subsidy applications, or documenting management measures. Digital measurement data doesn't replace a grower's experience – it adds what the eye alone can't see: the trend over days and weeks.

What We Concretely Offer

Our sensors deliver the measurements that actually matter in fruit growing.

For example:

• Soil Moisture – for irrigation based on actual need instead of a fixed schedule
• Leaf Moisture – for early assessment of fungal pressure (e.g. scab)
• Air and Soil Temperature – also serving as early warning for late-frost risk
• Light Intensity – an additional factor for ripeness assessment and site evaluation

The sensors transmit their data via LoRaWAN – low power consumption, long range, and multi-year battery life, even on plots with no WiFi or mobile network coverage. Built on open-source software (ChirpStack, ThingsBoard, Grafana), the values flow into a dashboard that shows what's actually happening in the orchard – clear and traceable, without you having to work through raw data yourself.

What You Get

• Reliable – measurements you can depend on, even over the years
• Transparent – traceable how a value comes about, instead of a black box
• Comparable – comparison across time periods, plots, or previous years
• Accurate – precise enough for real management decisions

Because we rely on open-source hardware and software, you stay independent of any single vendor – and retain control over your own data.

How We Work

We support you from the initial assessment through to ongoing operation: advice on the right sensor selection for your orchard, installation of sensors and gateways, setup of the data platform, and technical support throughout operation. You don't need to handle anything technical yourself – we take care of the end-to-end process.