Now that Florida’s citrus industry ended this year’s growing season with its lowest production in eight decades, an unlikely union has formed between two University of Florida startup companies, intent on helping reverse the trend.
By combining expertise in precision agriculture with leading-edge aerospace technology, the two companies housed in one of UF’s business incubators, Agriculture Intelligence and Satlantis, believe they can offer a powerful tool to help the state’s growers more closely monitor their trees and manage problems faster.
Scientists have helped growers fight declining productivity. On one front, they have developed disease-tolerant trees and are in the process of breeding disease-resistant trees to replace those lost. On another, they are creating new nutritional applications to help existing trees, but that is not enough – tracking the impact of these new remedies is critical, say industry leaders.
Source: news.ufl.edu