Dutch project of crop forecasting

Added on 21 January 2020

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For the past two growing seasons Stefan Hendriks, glasshouse vegetable advisor at food production advisory body Delphy, has worked on Peppervision, a pepper harvest forecasting model developed years ago by Wageningen University & Research, where Delphy is located, that "could with improvements become useful in practice".

Outlining the problem, he said: "As a grower, you always want to know as accurately as possible what quantity can be harvested in the coming weeks. A good forecast ensures that working hours can be properly planned, while the sellers want to know what they can expect in terms of product."

After two growing seasons of trials at a commercial pepper grower, part-funded by the Dutch government, "it is time to take stock", he said. "It appears that the model is not yet a ready-made product and certainly does not always give a better forecast than current systems."

He explained: "The harvest forecast gets better with more data, but there are four different colours of peppers with all kinds of different variety characteristics, which are grown in different growing areas.

"There is so much data to feed into the model to achieve the best results. For a successful harvest forecast model, much more data will have to be collected."

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Photo Credit: Delphy