The AI telling farmers when to harvest

When the first day of the apple harvest rolled around in Washington State last year, the fruit was ripe and the pickers were ready – but the weather had other ideas.

"It was like 38C… it's not safe for people to work in that heat," recalls Joel Carter at Okanagan Specialty Fruits. "We had to stop at 10 o'clock in the morning."

He says that artificial intelligence (AI) models that forecast ideal harvest dates, taking into account the weather, would be useful. "You need to know more than just when your fruit is going to be ripe. How long do you have to pick it?" he says. "That's where these models are really helpful."