Tag Archives: awards

AC Goatham wins award for Best Orchard

AC Goatham & Son has won the East Kent Fruit Society’s Best Orchard competition for an orchard of Zari at Shrubbery Farm in Eastry near Deal in Kent.

Shrubbery Farm also won the award for the Best Orchard under 1,000 trees and Zari also won the Class D Best Dessert category.

The farm includes 120 acres of topfruit, including 28 acres of Royal Gala, 34 of Zari, eight of Cox and 17 of Comice and Conference pears.

The Zari orchard is planted on wires with a 3m cane system, as part of a company-wide scheme to plant one million new trees across 17 farms by 2020. The planting distance is 3.5m between the rows and 1.2m within the rows and the orchard uses Malus and Golden Delicious as pollinators.

Nigel Stewart, technical director at AC Goatham, said, “We are absolutely delighted to have won the Orchard Competition, along with the other two titles. We strive for uniformity and perfection across all of our orchards and this particular Zari orchard is a real showcase of the team’s growing skills.”

Photo Caption: Nigel Stewart

Photo Credit: A C Goatham & Son

The post A C Goatham wins award for Best Orchard appeared first on Hort News.

Student develops salad harvester

A student at Cambridge University has won an industry award for developing a new concept for salad harvesting.

Armand de Durfort, a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique who has just completed his MPhil in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management at the University of Cambridge, developed his SoftHarvest system in cooperation with G’s Growers.

“The first challenge was to teach the harvester to recognise the lettuce and distinguish it from other green plants. The second was for it to pick the lettuce and cut it near to the ground without damaging it,” he explained.

“Our approach is to develop the vision recognition and control software and integrate this with a two-armed robot. By using existing hardware and adding considerable value with the application-specific software we aim to mitigate the risk of investment and provide a three-year return on investment.”

Presenting the Student award as part of Agri-Tech East’s GROW competition, Dr Belinda Clarke, said, “There is significant and growing demand for automation in agriculture as we move towards greater precision in all areas of the industry. Armand De Durfort produced a well researched business plan based on his direct experience of working with a commercial grower. It shows an appreciation of the narrow profit margins in this competitive market and the technology is inspirational.”

Photo Caption: Left-Right: David Langton (Agrii), Armand de Durfort (Softharvest), Phil Wigge (Pinpoint Phenomics), Belinda Clarke (Agri-Tech East)

Photo Credit: Agritech-East

 

The post Student develops salad harvester appeared first on Hort News on 13 July 2016.