Location: Kauai Coffee Plantation (KCP), Kauai, Hawaii

Aim: Coffee harvest optimization

Problems analysed: Coffee ripeness, drip irrigation issues, weed proliferation

Scale of production: 4-5 million pounds/year

Area covered: 3600 acres

Impact: Coffee is the leading agricultural commodity traded on world markets, and Hawaiian coffee is considered by many to be some of the finest in the world. A key to producing excellent coffee is knowing the right time to harvest it.

To aid Hawaiian coffee growers, remotely sensed imagers were provided so that growers will know, down to the exact day, the best time for harvesting the coffee, thereby bringing the best possible flavor to consumers.

Like wine, traditionally, coffee has been cultivated on small, one to 100-acre farms where hand picking is the standard harvesting procedure. However, KCP uses a fleet of mechanical harvesters. This approach is becoming a global trend in coffee production. Mechanical harvesters dislodge coffee ‘cherries’ at all stages of ripening. Ripe coffee cherries have the highest commercial value, commanding a significantly higher price per pound than either unripe or overripe cherries. The challenge for large-scale mechanical harvesting operations is dispatching the harvesters to the ripest fields in order to optimize the harvest of this high-value crop.

Additional Benefits:

Data revealed previously unrecognized sites of fungal disease, vine proliferation and irrigation problems.