Managing uniform citrus growth and color break

A drone flight capturing fruit growth and color break can help you to locate and manage variation in orchard vigor and health.

During the current cell expansion stage and leading up to color break, here are our recommendations for healthy citrus development.

Our insights will help you to:

• Detect problematic trees
• Manage canopy and volume for good penetration of sunlight for ripening of fruit
• Monitor heavy bearing trees for alternate bearing
• Compare the success of management practices between flights using our per-tree Health Index

These pests may pose a serious threat to your trees during this period:

• Thrips, fruit and leaves
• Mealybug
• Red scale
• Soft brown scale
• Orange caterpillar
• Citrus psylla
• Fruit fly

You should be monitoring your trees for the presence of these pests on a regular basis using Aeroview InField, our mobile app for pest or disease damage. We recommend keeping track of all of your findings digitally, to ensure that you can make the right decisions during the fruit growth stage.

Your trees may be susceptible to these diseases:

• Phytophthora
• Alternaria brown spot
• Citrus greening

Flight recommendations for later in the season:

Citrus farmers should continue to monitor their crops to ensure a profitable harvest period mid-year. A drone flight at this time may provide useful data to help you manage and compare zones where variation in vigor and health occurs. One of the benefits of a flight at this stage is that you can compare zones where you have intervened since your previous fruit growth flight.

Get in touch with our team about how we can get the most out of your yields, every season.