The Center of Pome fruits of the University of Talca (UTALCA) developed the IKAROS online system within the framework of an FIA Project called Online alert system to improve the condition and quality of apples. This system analyzes different factors to determine, months before being harvested, the conditions that fruit will have.
This web platform relates climate with the fruit's quality, taking into account meteorological, nutritional, and productive factors that interfere in the development of the fruit.
Jose Antonio Yuri, the director of the Center of Pome fruits said, "today, we finish a project for the FIA that uses a virtual platform to analyze the effect that climate and mineral nutrition have on the quality of apples. We are presenting it in a platform developed in conjunction with the Bioinformatics area of UTALCA, and the producers who are interested can now subscribe to it."
The goal of this project is to integrate agroclimatic information as an efficiency tool in the production of apples for export through new technologies, conceiving it as a site-specific system in the face of climate variability.
How it works
This tool works with models that integrate climate information with nutritional and productive factors to estimate the approximate date that the harvest will begin, storage potential, development of color, incidence of sun damage, incidence of physiological alterations, and bee flight conditions, among other things. It also synthesizes and interprets the information recorded in production management guidelines. For example, if the spring is cold or warm, IKAROS calculates what condition the apple will have in 4 or 6 months, when it is harvested, or the risk of developing alterations, depending on the course of the season and factors such as temperature and humidity, and through monitoring, the potential changes that the fruit will have.
In two months, the Center of Pome fruits will launch an agricultural climate guide and a manual for this platform, which seeks to facilitate the producers' decision making process. The system will work for apple production and, in the future, for cherry production.
Source: SimFRUIT according to information from FIA