June Research Updates Happy summer! With the busy sales season coming to a close here in the Northern Hemisphere, research is shifting into high gear. Here are our newest developments. Experiments are ongoing, so these sensor versions are not yet commercially available.
Small Sensor in Wine Grapes
Initial results in wine grapes smaller then 2 inches are very encouraging! Even with a wound size 10x smaller, the sensors are behaving well under these initial trials. Huge news for wineries everywhere!
Small probes installed into a 0.5” grapevine in Davis, CA.
Walnut - a Tough Nut to Crack!
The mircoT has yet to be validated in Walnuts due to unique “flooding” behavior from the plants wounding response. So instead of making a wound in the bark, we’re trying to skip drilling all together! The walnut’s chambered pith makes a perfect cavity for a FloraPulse sensor. This “heading cut” install has been promising in test orchards.
Data from Chandler walnut heading cuts, courtesy of UC Davis
How can FloraPulse Guide Irrigation?
The pressure bomb has been used to measure SWP for decades, but this typically only means 1 datapoint for a whole week! So what do daily midday measurements offer you instead? Read more about how FloraPulse SWP monitoring can be interpreted in our new blog post.