David Manktelow founded Applied Research and Technologies, providing contract and independent research work in horticultural plant protection, pathology and spray application technology.
A life-long innovator, he constantly seeks technologies that do tasks better. Whether simple strips of water sensitive paper or a fast laser scanner, he finds ways to help growers constantly improve practices.
At LandWISE 2021, David described the Green Atlas system of automatic counting and mapping of flowers and fruit in orchards. Together with Fruition Horticulture’s Jack Hughes, David has trialled the Green Atlas system in Hawke’s Bay and displayed the equipment at the field event.
Green Atlas Cartographer is a combination of hardware and software that allows flower and fruit counts to be quickly and accurately mapped over entire orchards. An unprecedented level of detail allows crop management to be tailored to every tree.
Matty Blomfieldgrew up in a small town in New Zealand. He took a chance and moved to Japan at 17, and later New York to broaden his view of the world. When he asked growers and packhouses what their biggest problem was they answered, “How do I know what fruit I have to store/pack/sell?”
Committed to reducing the amount of fruit wasted globally, by giving growers the platform to capture data, analyse their orchard in ways they’ve never done before, and improve the consistency of high quality, safe fruit, Matty co-founded Hectre to provide an orchard management software tool. Their super quick and simple fruit sizing app, Spectre, is an example of the innovation they’re bringing to the fruit industry.
Spectre uses computer vision AI technology to detect fruit size and colour, all from the simple click of an iPad or iPhone. Sample sizes captured by Spectre are 100 times those obtained in traditional sizing practices and accuracy levels are extremely high at 95%+. Results are served up within seconds making Spectre the simplest, fastest and most accurate, portable computer vision fruit sizing tool available on the market.
Matt Flowerday has been involved in farming and horticulture his whole life.
Matt started using GPS to map farms and orchards in 1998. In 2001 he set up GPS-it to carryout GPS mapping, with a focus on kiwifruit.
From beginnings in a small office on a kiwifruit orchard, with just one staff member and a GPS unit, the business has evolved significantly. GPS-it is now an established aerial farm mapping and software development company, providing high-quality customised geospatial solutions to our clients, using ESRI technology.
At the LandWISE 21 Conference, Matt will show how Landkind, an interactive platform that lets orchards and packhouses unlock the value of their maps, improves productivity and profitability by allowing users to create, manage, and interact with orchard data effortlessly.
Nick Fitzpatrick has spent the last 20 years in Primary Industries, primarily Fresh Fruit and Vegetable sector including 15 years with T&G Global’s International division, including establishing their Latin America business with offices in Peru and Chile, and in Asian market expansion.
More recently Nick worked for California based Science and Innovation start up company – Apeel Sciences, introducing plant based science and technology solutions to post harvest operators globally.
Now consulting to the Agriculture industry, including Callaghan Innovation, Nick is passionate about helping companies to embrace Innovation and Sustainability across their business.
With this background and his current role as Project Lead – Agritech Commercialisation at Callaghan Innovation working within the Agritech ITP, Nick was well placed to inform LandWISE 21 delegates about New Zealand’s place in a big world increasingly focused on agritech development.
Nick introduced the NZ Agritech Industry Transformation Plan and its aims:
using comparative advantage to grow Agritech as a high value export sector
Lifting primary sector productivity & sustainability, and enabling companies to move from volume to value
Contributing to global environmental and sustainability
challenges, and helping feed the world & reduce emissions
Callaghan Innovatoin is developing and early adopter network. THe aims are
Ensuring companies are solving the right problems
Increased collaboration between Industry, Agritech companies and government + Research partners
Better understanding of the ‘size of the prize’, both in NZ and Offshore.
Better prepared Agritech companies when showcasing/trialing products or going to market.
Nick explained the size of LATAM opportunities while contrasting the nature of agriculture and horticulture in Chile and Peru. Chile has good infrastructure, an educated population, and a qualified
technical workforce in the Fruit industry. Their key products are Cherries, Grapes, Pipfruit, Berries, Citrus and Avocados.
Peru is emerging as regional superpower. It has a different agriculture structure to Chile which has thousands of small farms and hundreads of packers and exprters. Peru has a number of very large farms. The key products are Berries, Grapes, Avocados, Citrus, Mangos, and Vegetables.
In summary:
Chile and Peru in particular are ripe for introduction of new, cost efficient, technology as the fruit sector transforms from being heavily dependant on human labour to embracing automation and
innovation. Chileans and Peruvians are eager to engage and open to new tech in Agriculture.
Rob Elstone is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hortworx and owner of RBE Automation.
Coming from a background in aviation, commercial and industrial electrical, Rob was Lead Automation Engineer with Fruit Handling systems and subsequently Compac Sorting.
Having spent the last 7 years in the fruit industry, Rob’s passion for machine building has led to the launch of Hortworx’ flagship products, the Robotic Bin Filling range.
With the goal to improve the efficiency of Packhouses and Orchards, through the smart use of robotics, Rob has a vision to maintain the human machine collaboration through “Inclusive Automation”.
At LandWISE 2021, Rob will talk about the development of products for the horticulture industry. He will have equipment on display at the field event.
David Manktelow founded Applied Research and Technologies, providing contract and independent research work in horticultural plant protection, pathology and spray application technology. 
Nick Fitzpatrick has spent the last 20 years in Primary Industries, primarily Fresh Fruit and Vegetable sector including 15 years with T&G Global’s International division, including establishing their Latin America business with offices in Peru and Chile, and in Asian market expansion.
Rob Elstone is the Co-Founder and CEO of 