Person pruning apple trees

AI Pruning!

AI-Supported Fruit Tree Pruning

Plant pruning is a demanding, critical, and expensive task in fruit growing that is often performed by experts or the fruit growers themselves, as mistakes affect the perennial crop in the long term. However, since skilled workers and time are lacking, AI Pruning aims to help overcome these bottlenecks.

With AI pruning, untrained workers can perform pruning professionally and quickly. A smartphone is used - which can be extended with smart glasses - that analyzes the plants and displays precise instructions for pruning directly. This can close a significant innovation gap between technology and practice.

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Current News

EU-CAP Network

On June 17 and 18, two members of our OG participated in a seminar organized by the EU-CAP Network. Under the title "On-farm demonstration for peer-to-peer learning & innovation", we discussed the possibilities and challenges of demonstrations on agricultural farms, as well as the establishment of special demonstration farms.

The first day began with presentations and short workshops on the topic, followed by visits to practical farms as examples. Among other things, trials on soil-conserving tillage and a rice farmer were shown. On the second seminar day, several projects had the opportunity to introduce themselves to the participants and explain their approaches to networking within the projects. It became apparent that many of the approaches presented naturally occur in our project without needing a special seminar.

Project Timeline

05.2025 Precise 3D reconstruction of trees to be pruned

04.2025 Successful semantic segmentation

03.2025 AI Pruning presents itself to the industry

01.2025 Mass recordings in South Tyrolean production facilities

11.2024 Winter pruning, image recording with recording app of orchard meadows

03–10.2024 Development of the recording app

02.2024 Start of image material annotation

01.2024 Project start: early start of measures; winter pruning and image recording

AI Pruning is funded until 2027 by EIP-AGRI