
Our partner OLIVOS riego down in Chile took on a massive effort validate the new small FloraPulse probes in a variety of crops against the pressure chamber. Hundreds of pressure bomb readings were taken! And the results were nothing short of amazing. Most crops worked very well: blueberry, cherry, mandarin, grape, hazelnut, kiwi, prune. And the results for new crops are encouraging, but there’s still work to be done (avocado, walnut). With all we’ve learned from this testing and new sensor improvements, we expect even better results moving forward.
The plot for each crop shows two sensors installed in the same tree (light blue, dark blue or purple) and pressure bomb readings (orange). Take a look!
Avocado – worked well for a while, but one of the sensors always read zero SWP.

Blueberry – beautiful agreement between sensors and pressure chamber.

Cherry – pretty good agreement between sensors and pressure chamber, particularly during the drier times.

Grape – great agreement between sensors and pressure chamber.

Hazelnut – good agreement between sensors and pressure chamber.

Kiwi – near perfect agreement between sensors, but they often read wetter than the pressure chamber.

Mandarin orange – very nice agreement between sensors and pressure chamber.

Prune – perfect agreement between sensors and pressure chamber.

Walnut – very good agreement between 1 sensor and the pressure chamber, but the 2nd sensor read drier than expected.

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