Written by Paige Beuhler and Ines Hanrahan WTFRC, January, 2026
In December of 2025, the WA Tree Fruit Research Commission approved $564,371 for six (6) new technology research projects for the upcoming year.
2026 New Technology Project Details
Project Title: KISS Robotic Harvester: No-Conveyance, Direct Tree to Bin
Organization (s): ABC Med Tech
PI (s): Allard, R.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $61,000
Length: 1 Year
This project proposes a simplified, open-source, vision-guided robotic apple harvesting system built around two industrial robotic arms designed for low maintenance, cost efficiency, and high productivity. The system eliminates complex mechanical components such as conveyors, tubes, and rotary bin fillers, instead using a direct pick-to-bin approach to reduce fruit damage, maintenance needs, and system complexity. By integrating proven suction cup end-effectors and established vision technology, the design emphasizes durability, scalability, and economic feasibility. The architecture is intended to supplement human labor, improve harvesting efficiency, extend picking hours, and reduce long-term labor costs while remaining adaptable to modern orchard systems. A strong focus is placed on cost containment, simplified maintenance, and achieving a favorable return on investment for Washington apple growers.
Objectives
- Develop an open-source vision system that detects apple load and position to optimize robotic picking paths and improve harvest efficiency.
- Design a cost-effective two-arm robotic platform using existing industrial components to reduce capital investment and accelerate return on investment.
- Create a simplified, durable architecture with minimal mechanical systems to reduce maintenance, troubleshooting, and downtime in commercial orchard environments.
Project Title: Development of UVC Sprayer Prototype for Powdery Mildew and Fire Blight Management
Organization (s): Washington State University, Puren Solutions
PI (s): Hoheisel, G.; Moyer, M.; DuBose. J.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $88,101
Length: 1 Year
Tree fruit growers face ongoing economic pressure from powdery mildew and other diseases that require repeated fungicide applications and are increasingly complicated by resistance concerns. Nighttime UV-C offers a promising, non-chemical control strategy because germicidal UV-C wavelengths do not naturally reach the Earth’s surface, and pathogens are less able to repair UV-induced DNA damage in darkness. Research across multiple crops has demonstrated effective suppression of powdery mildew and other pathogens using low, well-timed nighttime UV-C doses without harming yield or fruit quality. However, the primary barrier to adoption in tree fruit is not biological efficacy—it is the lack of a field-ready, orchard-compatible delivery system. This project focuses on designing and building a practical, dose-accurate, and modular UV-C applicator tailored to trellised apple, cherry, and pear systems. The goal is to create a safe, scalable, and easily adoptable platform that integrates with existing equipment and night operations, providing growers with a residue-free, resistance-breaking tool that fits within modern orchard management programs.
Objectives
- Quantify dose–response of a UV-C protype in different tree fruit canopy architectures, with and without fan-assisted lead agitation.
- Optimize modular components for height and lateral reach for common training systems.
- Meet worker-safety standards for UV-C which can include integrating shields, interlocks, kill-switches, light curtains and/or signage.
- Validate tower-sprayer compatibility (hitch, hydraulics, power) and modularity so the kit scales from narrow to wide row spacings and can be serviced with common parts.
Project Title: Online Irrigation University for Washington Tree Fruit Growers
Organization (s): Washington State University
PI (s): Peter, T.; Gorthi, S.; Bhalekar, D., Sallato, B.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $49,206
Length: 1 Year
Irrigation management is essential to maintaining profitability and sustainability in Washington’s tree fruit industry, particularly as growers face increasing water limitations, climate variability, and rising input and labor costs. While precision irrigation technologies such as soil moisture probes, plant sensors, and weather-based decision tools offer meaningful benefits, adoption has been limited by training gaps, data interpretation challenges, language barriers, and uncertainty about return on investment. This project proposes the development of an “Online Irrigation University,” a bilingual, multi-format educational platform that provides flexible, on-demand training through videos, articles, structured modules, and interactive discussion forums. A key component will be user-friendly ROI calculators that allow growers to evaluate the financial and water-use benefits of irrigation technologies using their own orchard data. By combining practical technical training with clear economic decision-support tools, the initiative aims to increase adoption of precision irrigation practices, improve water efficiency, enhance fruit quality, and support long-term profitability across Washington’s tree fruit industry.
Objectives
- Produce and disseminate a minimum of 4 freely available instructional YouTube videos and 4 extension articles (Fruit Matters and Good Fruit Grower) within a year on irrigation management in tree fruit. Topics Include:
- Irrigation management of tree fruit using free weather-based tools
- Sensors and their data for irrigation management in tree fruit.
- Automation and precision irrigation technologies for irrigation in tree fruit.
- Variable rate irrigation opportunities and options in tree fruit.
- Develop free, grower-friendly, web-based ROI calculators for different precision irrigation technologies. Include default cost estimates for the various technologies but allow growers to modify these for their operations. These will be available from just a web browser.
- Facilitate interactive grower engagement by establishing an online discussion forum and hosting at least 2 virtual workshops annually.
- Ensure that all of these are available in both English and Spanish.
Project Title: International Collab: Supporting Harvest Automation with Open Digital Orchards
Organization (s): Oregon State University, Stichting Wageningen Research, Bioeconomy Science Institute
PI (s): Davidson, J.; Grimm, C.; Hemming, J.; Oliver, R.; Rojo, F.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $300,000
Length: 2 Year
Apple growers are facing rising labor costs and increasing difficulty securing harvest workers, while fruit prices remain stagnant, creating urgent pressure for practical harvesting solutions. Although robotic apple harvesters have been heavily pursued, many efforts have struggled with throughput limitations, high capital costs, and compatibility challenges in diverse orchard systems. Fully autonomous harvesting systems often remain too slow and expensive to compete with human labor under commercial conditions. As a near-term alternative, harvest mechanization offers a more feasible bridge. A recently developed mechanical harvesting system has demonstrated high picking capacity with significant labor savings, requiring only two operators and replacing large picking crews and related infrastructure. However, bruising rates remain a key limitation, with a portion of fruit downgraded to processing grade. This project aims to refine and validate the system in modern orchard architectures, reduce fruit damage, and provide independent performance and economic evaluations to determine its commercial viability compared to traditional hand harvesting.
Objectives
- The goal is to further develop and validate the mechanized harvester as a viable intermediate solution for apple orchards:
- Reduce Bruising Rates
- Improve collection methods to lower bruised fruit percentage from 20% to 10%.
- Validate effects of bruising after storage.
- Independent Performance Testing
- Confirm hourly yield across different orchard training systems.
- Assess bruising percentage consistently under varying orchard conditions.
- Economic Viability
- Demonstrate that margins improve beyond manual harvesting, making the solution attractive to growers with suitable planting systems.
Project Title: Robotic Harvesting: Multi-Camera Fruit Detection Under Heavy Occlusion
Organization (s): University of California, Davis
PI (s): Vougioukas, S.; Bailey, B.; Kong, Z.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $204,766
Length: 2 Years
Robotic apple harvesting remains limited by heavy fruit occlusion in wider-canopy orchards, resulting in low and highly variable picking thoroughness that creates unpredictable labor needs and weakens economic feasibility. Current systems relying on a single camera per picking arm struggle to detect and access hidden fruit, and using the arm itself to reposition cameras reduces harvest speed. This project proposes a new approach that replaces single-camera perception with actively controlled multiple cameras integrated into advanced real-time 3D canopy reconstruction. The goal is to significantly improve fruit detection under occlusion and generate accurate canopy models that enable faster, more precise robotic movement. High-fidelity virtual orchard simulations will be used to develop and test algorithms before validation in commercial orchards. All perception tools and virtual orchard models will be released as open source, reducing development costs and risk for robotic harvesting systems and supporting long-term solutions to labor shortages in Washington’s apple and stone fruit industries.
Objectives
- Create a High-Fidelity Synthetic Apple Orchard
- Develop a Multi-Camera Active Vision System
- Evaluate the Active Vision System in Simulations and in Orchards
Project Title: AWN Smart Farms: LoRaWAN-enabled Platform for Precision & Automated Apple Heat Stress Management
Organization (s): Washington State University
PI (s): Khot, L.; Sallato, B.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $247,887
Length: 3 Years
Washington’s apple industry is facing increasing heat stress events that threaten fruit quality, yield, and water use efficiency. Overhead cooling systems are widely used to mitigate these risks, but traditional approaches can be water intensive. Recent field trials demonstrated that integrating real-time canopy and fruit temperature sensing with automated cooling controls can significantly reduce water use—by nearly half—without compromising yield or fruit quality. Building on this success, the AWN Smart Farm Platform uses grower-owned sensor networks and LoRaWAN-enabled communication to support real-time decision-making and automated actuation for cooling and irrigation systems while maintaining data privacy and lowering monitoring costs. This project aims to refine and expand the platform across additional commercial apple blocks in major production regions, providing growers with a scalable, data-driven system to improve heat stress management and water efficiency across Washington’s tree fruit industry.
Objectives
- Scale AWN Smart Farm Platform to support sensor-driven, block-level precision and automated heat stress management using real-time fruit/canopy temperature data.
- Enhance the dashboard through grower-informed iterative improvements, including bilingual interface support and the development of user-friendly instructional videos.
- Advance weather-guided fruit surface temperature modeling by leveraging crowdsourced data from 18+ spatiotemporally distributed orchard blocks across Washington.
- Cost-benefit analysis of the AWN-Smart Farm platform driven automated heat stress management and extension education.
Contact
Paige Beuhler
Administrative Officer, WTFRC
paigeb@treefruitresearch.com
509 665 8271 ext. 2
Ines Hanrahan
Executive Director, WTFRC
hanrahan@treefruitresearch.com
509 669 0267
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