Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is putting up to CA$1.7 million into adapting an orchard camera system for vineyards, to help grape growers spot disease and manage yields before problems are visible. The AgriScience Program funding, announced on 10 September, goes to Vivid Machines, founded in Ontario in 2020 by Jenny Lemieux and Jonathan Binas.

Its Vivid XV sensor bolts onto a tractor or sprayer and combines high-speed optics with a multispectral camera reading visible and near-infrared light. In apple orchards it scans about 15,000 trees an hour, counting and sizing fruit and flagging early disease tree by tree, with each reading tagged to a precise location.

Grapes are harder: vines grow in a flatter, denser trellised canopy, and diseases such as downy mildew and botrytis bunch rot often show first on leaf undersides or inside dense clusters. The three-year project involves AAFC's own researchers. Agriculture minister Heath MacDonald said the right technology helps protect crops and rural economies.

Photo: Craig Hatfield / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Source: Global Agriculture