Spray drones with pinpoint accuracy, produce-picking robots, autonomous systems to monitor broiler chicken health, and artificial intelligence to predict yield before the buds have faded from the trees these are some of the solutions integrative precision agriculture promises an industry that is embracing the power of technology to address both age-old and emerging challenges.
March 9, 2021
From left, Josh Fuder, Ray Covington and Stephen Mihm have been UGA’s driving forces behind the creation of the Heritage Apple Orchard. (Photo by Mike Terrazas)
The names tick off like racehorses or colors from some fancy catalog: Carolina Red June, Duchess of Oldenburg, Hewe’s Crab and Rabun Bald, Limbertwig and Nickajack and Parks’ Pippin, and many more. But these aren’t paint chips they’re apples, hundreds of varieties that thrived in orchards across North Georgia a century ago, before an evolving apple industry swept them off shelves and tables, never to return.
Until now. With the help of a dedicated group of University of Georgia researchers, Extension agents and volunteer enthusiasts, Georgia’s lost apple varieties are making a comeback. The newly planted Heritage Apple Orchard, located at UGA’s Georgia Mountain Research & Education Center in Blairsville, is meant to reclaim many of those bygone cultivars and demonstrate why Georgia once was at t