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"Tomatoes typically bear fruit in clusters, requiring robots to pick the ripe ones while leaving the rest on the vine, demanding advanced decision-making and co
by HanClinto 10mo ago
"Tomatoes typically bear fruit in clusters, requiring robots to pick the ripe ones while leaving the rest on the vine, demanding advanced decision-making and control capabilities."
At what point do we begin to grow tomatoes specifically for their harvestability (in addition / as opposed to other attributes)?
This sort of thing happened years ago with farmers producing product specifically for things like "durability in shipping" -- I'm thinking of "machine-pickable" as the natural next step for growers to aim for.
Is this already being done? I'd love to hear about how this sort of thing is already in place.
Whether this means mechanically manipulating flower + fruit locations (specifically growing vines in a way that produces fruit in a controlled manner), or possibly even breeding cultivars that specifically have more robot-friendly fruit clustering, I wonder what these sorts of efforts might look like in the future?
- ac29 10mo agoThe way greenhouse tomatoes are grown is already pretty robot friendly. See below for a couple examples: https://www.denso.com/global/en/news/newsroom/2024/20240513-g01/ https://www.denso.com/global/en/news/newsroom/2024/20240513-... https://tta-iso.com/innovations/harvai https://tta-iso.com/innovations/harvai
- mcguirep 10mo ago> I'm thinking of "machine-pickable" as the natural next step for growers to aim for. > Is this already being done? This is, indeed, already something that is done. As I understand it, for tomatoes it's typically for canning varieties, but they're called determinate cultivars[1]. Even with those, I know in processing you still have to discard the occasional fruit that isn't ripe. I imagine this kind of technological solution would also be more useful when picking tomatoes for use as the fresh fruit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinate_cultivar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinate_cultivar
- Hasz 10mo agoIt is done for entire species. There is plenty of fruits (Pawpaw, loquat, soursop come to mind) that are really not grown at-scale commercially in the US due to spoilage, easy to bruise, or other similar issues. If you like interesting fruit, I highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/@WeirdExplorer/ https://www.youtube.com/@WeirdExplorer/ for many fruits you will have never seen before.
- fellowniusmonk 10mo agoLoquat cardamom jam is pure sex on a buttered english muffin. Probably the most satisfying flavor I've ever consumed, certainly there is no more satisfying flavor. Sadly just as my tree started producing bumper crops a historic freeze killed it.
- phito 10mo agoWill they manage to make mass produced tomatoes when worse than they are now? Seriously they're so bad, they're not even worth purchasing in my opinion.
- amitport 10mo agoI bet you live in the US. What you describe is not a universal issue.
- phito 10mo agoNo, I'm from Belgium and we get awful tasteless tomatoes from the Netherlands.
- techsystems 10mo agoDutch products in general are low quality. So glad I got out.
- graemep 10mo agoIn the UK we mostly grow our own tasteless tomatoes.
- inemesitaffia 10mo agoMost of the issues are from lack of ripeness at plucking. If you wait till they are about to spoil on the vine, even the one's you really don't like will have taste
- anothernewdude 10mo agoKeeping them on the vine is far better for the consumer, who can have a range of tomatoes that ripen as you eat them.
- iancmceachern 10mo ago"At what point do we begin to grow tomatoes specifically for their harvestability" This has been happening for hundreds of years already with every food crop.
- jjk166 10mo agoPresumably they mean robot harvest-ability as opposed to human harvest-ability.
- iancmceachern 10mo agoThey're the same thing, in practice. Edited to add the in practice part.
- jjk166 10mo agoThey are very clearly not. Humans are good at some things, like recognizing fruit in clusters. Robots are good at different things. Shifting from easy for a human to harvest to easy for a robot to harvest is both in theory and practice a radical change.
- iancmceachern 10mo agoBut the same things benefit both. And often "human" harvesting just means humans driving farm equipment, which are now basically totally automated. Things like growing crops in rows. Things like grape vines being trained into rows. Things like nut trees bred so they shed their nuts when shaken by a mechanical shaker. These things are the same, it's just how automated we go. I've spent over a decade in the agtech/robotics space here in Norcal and everyone seems to have an opinion, until you actually go out to where our food is grown and find out it's already highly automated, robotic, etc. It's just not sexy in the VC tech way we need it to be to be cool to talk about. Go to a modern farm, see how intertwined tech, farming, biology, all is. It didn't get this way overnight. Put another way. What improvements to plants to benefit human harvestability can you think of wouldn't also improve robotic harvestability?
- liamzebedee 10mo agoThey are doing this now actually for plant breeding! "Engineering crop flower morphology facilitates robotization of cross-pollination and speed breeding" covers one example by breeding flowers to be more easily pickable by robotics. [1] https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00840-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00840-2
- stuaxo 10mo agoWe already did this for durability, resulting in tomatoes that didn't taste of very much. Now, the supermarkets that sold those have solved it by breeding ones that are incredibly sweet.
- robotguy 10mo agoThey're called "processing tomatoes" and it's a very interesting crop and industry. Bred for a narrow ripening window, to be machine harvestable, and shippable in massive bulk. https://ctga.org/tomato-facts/ https://ctga.org/tomato-facts/