Orchard Tools
If you’re sick and tired of painstakingly counting all the fruitlets in your orchard or vineyard while thinning, you’ll be happy to hear of a new app developed by Perennia, the provincial agriculture development agency in Nova Scotia.
Perennia has now released the app Orchard Tools, available on the Apple App Store for an annual subscription fee of $29.99.
The app’s record-keeping functions are designed to simplify the thinning process and save growers time. Tree fruit specialist Michelle Cortens describes it as a handheld tool for digital data input.
The idea behind the app was to make the chemical thinning process more efficient and less tedious. Today, thinning often involves one person counting fruitlets, another recording the data on a spreadsheet, then one of them entering all of that data into a computer.
The Perennia team reasoned that everybody carries a smartphone now, so it made sense to create a data-entry app that could be used in the field, Cortens said.
The app has a list of functions the farmer can select, each with its own specialized keyboard for entering data in the simplest way possible. For example, the users can enter the diameter of the fruitlets and its position in the cluster, allowing the farmer to easily calculate the growth rate of the fruit.
Orchard Tools includes functions for reviewing averages and graphs, providing the farmer with instant feedback, and it does not require a Wifi or cellular connection to work.