When it comes to mildew killers, there’s a new kid in town, and is it true some people think the kid is kinda like a Roomba for your vineyard? Yep.
Those lucky people who attended the inaugural Mindset conference held June 8-10 in got to see those Roomba-like Saga Robotics UV-C robots in a vineyard demo with a great, in-depth introduction from Caine Thompson, general manager at Saga Robotics based in Paso Robles.
Two of California’s biggest organic growers, Bonterra (6 robots, 200 acres) and Castoro Cellars (using Saga robots for four years, and now over 600 acres) are already using the robots on 800+ acres of vines.
Ninety more robots were just delivered to the U.S. and the company is exploring new sources for manufacturing them in the U.S. (to overcome those pesky tariffs).
Overview: SEE STORY WITH VISUALS HERE (FREE)
• UV-C robots offer a healthy fungicidal alternative to sulfur, oils and synthetic fungicides that affect vines adversely and impede wine fermentation
• UV-C light does not affect insect life in the vineyard, only mildew and sour rot
• Workers do not have to wait to re-enter fields after UV- C treatment
• UV-C Saga robots rent for $770 per acre per season, offering cost savings in diesel, chemicals, and labor.
• One operator can manage 10-12 robots, each with a battery life of 7-8 hours and each covering 14 acres nightly.
• The electric robots weigh 800 pounds and operate on flat to slightly undulating land. A new model can handle up to 20-degree slopes.
• The company is developing partnerships for beneficial insect releases (with Kopert) and laser technology for weed control (with Carbon Robotics).
• The robots also capture data for yield estimates, irrigation leaks and more
SEE THIS POST WITH PHOTOS HERE (FREE)
General Manager Caine Thompson of Saga Robotics and demo observers at Mindset conference
Here are Caine’s introductory remarks (during which I learned more than a few new things):
“When you look at fungicide use, pesticide use, the amount of chemicals that we’ve used has close to tripled over the last 25 years, and that’s mainly been because resistance is being built from a number of the chemicals that are used in farming. So, as a result, we end up applying more frequent, higher doses, and more chemistry comes in.
“But we’re also having a massive impact on ecology drift when we apply synthetic chemicals, and then also our softer approaches–of sulfur oils, coppers are still very, very detrimental to the biosphere on the wine and on the vineyard as well.”
Saga Robotics was developed 10 years ago by Professor Pål Johan from Norway.
He was developing agriculture robots at the University of Norway, where they’ve got one of the largest robotic schools in the world, and he met a plant pathology professor, and the two of them were talking about agriculture. The pathology professor was using UV light to control mildew and botrytis and various crops, but had no way to get the UV physically out into the field.
So the two of them got together, formed a company 10 years ago, and started building robots with UV to control powdery mildew and downy mildew and started in strawberries in the UK 10 years ago. Strawberries are one of the “dirty dozen” crops, defined as using the most chemicals of any crop.
Now, Saga treats about 35 percent of strawberries in the UK without chemicals.
US BASED RESEARCH
Then five years ago Paul relocated to the US, basing himself out of Santa Barbara, and formed a partnership with Cornell University.
Over the last five years there has been a peer-reviewed research with Cornell, comparing cyber robotics and UV light versus conventional chemical farming programs in the Northeast (where Cornell is), where it’s high mildew, high botrytis, high down in mildew, high sour rots–the perfect place to test the efficacy of UV light.
What’s been found in those five years is that every year the efficacy is as good, if not better, than conventional fungicide programs which is really encouraging.
One of the main benefits, when we talk about ecology of vineyards–the biosphere of the vine and the phylosphere of the vine–there’s millions and millions of bacteria on every leaf and every bunch. All of the sulfurs, coppers, foils, and synthetics completely obliterate them. Same with native yeast as well.
There was a study just recently published about 158 native yeast species, and all of those [fungicidal] products completely take out the native yeast species.
When you look at UV light, the biosphere and native yeast–coexisting and evolving with light millions and millions of years–the built-up resistance mechanisms within the phylosphere, within native yeast, to protect it from life.
What we’re doing with UV light here is taking light and applying it at night–so when you look at powdery mildew, downy mildew, botrytis–they haven’t evolved like the phylosphere, like yeast.
They are very, very susceptible to light, so in viticulture, when you open up the canopy, you get better mildew control versus a closed canopy, but it’s usually not enough to get complete mildew control.
The reason why is that the mildew will repair itself, because it’s getting light on it, and it can keep repairing itself.
So, the big change in the research happened about 10 years ago. So, it’s relatively new research. When light is applied at night, the short pulse of light is applied and then there’s a two hour period of darkness that follows. So the UV-C light kind of breaks that [repairing itself] bond, and controls the mildew, but only when applied at night in that scenario.
I don’t think that there is anything like a silver bullet in viticulture, but when we talk about an integrated system of combining nutrition, using light to wean off chemicals, and to wean off sulfur, we all know the issues in the winery with sulfur. [It impedes fermentation.]
This is a way that you get disease control without chemicals by having the lowest possible impact on ecology.
This is not a pest control mechanism, so there’s no impact on mealybug leafhoppers. When you see the leafhoppers kind of buzzing in, out, you’ll see moths buzzing in and out. There’s no impact on them, because their outer shells have evolved with light for millions of millions of years.
It’s the same with beneficial insects–no impact versus sulfur where there are massive impacts on beneficial insects. Same with oils.
DRIFT
We’re having a lot of off-target drift with any chemical wave, right? Even with the softest ones.
UV-C light is a short pulse that goes through priming the vine–it’s disrupting the mildew cycles and botrytis cycles–and then there’s no residual impact at all.
So there’s no residual effect on the vine, and workers can go straight back into the vineyard.
There’s no impact on the soil, the ecology, anything around, and obviously no withholding periods.
So the program could start from budburst and go all the way through the harvest to get complete control of botrytis and sour rot right at the time of the harvest.
They’ve got a number of real life case studies, including one just down the road, and they’ve got amazing new results with botrytis and sour rot control using UV spanning across numerous areas throughout California.
DEMO
(I took a video but it did not turn out well, sorry. So this photo will have to do. But you can see a video from another source here.)
Michael Hutchinson of Saga:
The robot knows where it is using RTK GPS, which for us gets about one centimeter of accuracy.
If it ever doesn’t get back, because things happen to the signals, it just stops, waits a minute, and carries on when it’s good again. It has lidars on it, which is how it sees, and that’s these things at the top.
You might see one on the other side, too.
The little dome–that’s essentially a laser range, lidar spinning around–sees the distance to everything around it. When setting it up out of sight, we make its map.. It is kind of like Google Maps, but for a robot.
For the operator, it’s a case of putting its map on one of its roads and clicking a switch, and it will drive itself from then on.
DISCUSSION
Question: Do you sell them?
Caine: We actually rent them, so it’s robots as a service.
The way the model works is it’s same price for everyone– $770 an acre to rent for a full season.
That’s usually offset, if not more so, by saving in diesel, chemical, labor, tractor hours.
One person can oversee 10 to 12 robots, so we’ll have one operator running them.
At Antonori in Napa, they have a couple of robots that are working so autonomously that at night those staff are doing different things–mowing the underlying plants, cultivating.
Question: What support do you offer?
We’ve got a full, online support system, and if any issue comes up, support is available 24 hours, seven days a week, plus personal support in the US.
Question: Will it work on trellis vines and head trained vines?
Caine: It works on head trained as well.
This model is mainly for flat to slightly undulating land.
We’ve got a relatively new model that was just released this year, which is a little larger, that can do slopes up to about 20 degrees.
When we talk about regenerative farming, we’ve got tractors and sprayers that are 15,000 pounds. Eventually we’re going to get lower energy consumption with autonomous lightweight robots. These are only 800 pounds, so they’re super lightweight and they’re all electric, so there’s very, very low carbon impact.
Each robot will do about 14 acres a night.
Question: How steep can it operate? Is there a crawler version, and are you looking into a two wheel version?
Caine: The next version is bigger–bigger wheels can do up to 20 degree slopes, but we have had a number of people ask about crawlers, and that’s something that we’re interested in exploring,
As the company builds, we believe that we need to solve other problems for growers to help remove other chemicals.
UV-C will be the main proposition that, as we continue to evolve the autonomous vineyard of the future, we’ll be adding more tools for reducing pesticides and herbicides.
We are working on a partnership with Kopert, the beneficial insect company that helped develop a beneficial insect releaser that we can put on top of the robot.
So we can release beneficials as we go through.
And then work on the other stack of problems that we need to solve for growers in regenerative farming, and even the conventional farming space as well.
I haven’t met a grower in my life that doesn’t want to move away from chemicals, no matter how you’re farming.
So, what can we do on the underside, the under vine area?
We’re going through so frequently, so small amounts of disruption, like with a finger weeder, are in the R&D pipeline.
And then there’s a pretty cool technology around laser technology for weed control, using AI to detect what’s a weed, what’s not a weed, and there’s systems now that can pick that up. Carbon Robotics specializes in that technique, and that is technology that’s widely available, so we’re looking at partnership options for that.
There’s also a lot of cameras on the robots, so we can do a lot of capturing a lot of data–yield estimates, missing vines, red blotch, virus–and send reports of exactly where those vines are. Since cameras are on the outside, we’re working on protecting against irrigation leaks.
This diagram is from the company website.
To reduce the amount of time that people have to spend buzzing around vineyards–looking for irrigation leaks and gopher holes, for example–is an opportunity… if we can find exactly where they are, we can get better control of gophers and ground squirrels.
Question: Are you typically seeing organic growers use this at the beginning of the season, and then maybe through flowering, and then once they start to see mildew on a green berry? Or…?
Caine: At Castoro, where we’ve been working for four years now, we’re operating about 700 acres. We started off as a 40 acre trial, where they are down to one spray as kind of a clean up to start the start the season. Elsewhere, it’s UV-C all the way through.
Then if for whatever reason you need a popup, then they’ll do a sulfur application sometime through the season. It can be a hybrid approach.
Caine: Bien Nacido has had really, really good results.
[See Greg Gonzalez video.]
They’ve been able to reduce their fungicide use by about 60 percent.
Question: How long does the battery last?
Caine: So, most of the power draw is coming from the lights, so they’ll run about seven to eight hours in a night, and on 240 volt it all charged fully ready for the next day.
Question: How do I convince the owners that also purchased the [now parked] Monarch tractor to go for this? After they’ve been disappointed by Monarch.
Lots of laughing.
Caine: That is pretty much everyone we’re working with.
It was pretty funny on some of the really isolated blocks, where there is no charging, we’re actually using Monarchs to charge robots there.
BONUS VIDEO
Enjoy this night time view of the action: https://organicwineuncorked.substack.com/p/can-sagas-robots-protect-against
No comments:
Post a Comment