Save the peaches

Farmers can lose everything in a couple of hours In 2013, 85% of the peach production in the Mendoza region (Argentina) was lost because of frost. Because less fruit was produced in the region, 600.000 less work days were needed to process the harvest between November 2013 and March 2014, a reduction in work force of 10.600 people. Across the Mendoza region, frost has caused a loss of revenue of 950 million Argentine pesos roughly 100 million USD in the peach business alone. A frost event happens when the temperature is so low that the crops cannot recover their tissue or internal structure from the effects of water freezing inside or outside the plant. For the peach production, a critical period is when the trees are in bloom and fruit set (Aug./Sept. in Mendoza), during which the temperature needs to be kept above 3° C. Even a few hours below that temperature causes flowers to fall, preventing fruits to grow. The goal of the project is to predict frost events in peach orchards by using dense monitoring using low-power wireless mesh networking technology. Off-the-shelf commercial solutions are available today which offer >99.999% end-to-end data reliability and a decade of battery lifetime. We deploy low-power wireless mesh networks of temperature, relative humidity and soil moisture sensors directly into the orchard. We use machine learning and pattern recognition to build a micro-climate predictive model by continuously analyzing the gathered sensor data in real time, and issue early frost warnings.