The Protected Cropping Australia (PCA) Conference 2019 held its final day of plenary sessions on the Gold Coast, with a focus on technology, biosecurity, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Labour and plant nutrition.
Among the sessions, delegates learnt about the lessons learnt by the strawberry industry during the needle tampering incident in 2018, and how to deal with a crisis when things go wrong. While there was a discussion on technology, and whether growers and farmers need to collaborate with engineers and researchers in forming useful automation and robotics - rather than having it being created for them, and it not being effective in solving a problem.
It was also the final chance for the conference's 575 delegates to explore the exhibition trade show, which this year sold a record 83 booths showcasing a wide range of products and services products and services for the PCA industry.
A & D Australasia, showcased their metal detector and check-weighers, which was useful following the strawberry tampering incident. It can pick up any metallic foreign object that should not be in produce packs.
Another product that A & D Australasia had was from Packhouse Solutions. The device scans the packaging and knows how much fruit should be included in the packaging or punnet, and displays red, yellow and green lights accordingly.
FTEK was explaining its latest TekSpray model with AirBoost technology and 1000L bulk tank, which is now available. It uses an innovative automatic system to quickly refill a small on-board spray tank between row changes. The Tek-Spray robot has been designed to optimise the efficient and controlled application of sprays on indoor crops.
Dosec Design's Ric Otton delivered a presentation surrounding his EnviroNode IoT Solutions. It discovers, connects, concentrates and logs data from instrumentation in CSV format onto its SD memory card, and forwards it to the cloud.
KG Solutions had huge interest from delegates for its mobile container systems, which can be used for a wide range of crops - but one of the biggest growing areas is medicinal cannabis.
Two separate farm tours take place tomorrow, on the final official day of the conference.