WayBeyond Launches Crop Registration, Moving Tomatoes Into Next-gen Tech

New Zealand agtech business Waybeyond has launched a purpose-built mobile Crop Registration app for tomato growers, digitizing a time-consuming manual data process.

“Those in the tomato business will be very familiar with Crop Registration and the task of collating that information. When we started talking to tomato growers last year it was the one thing that continually came up in discussion as something to support labor usage, business insights and trends,” explains Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Morgan.

“The faster you collect information the faster you can start making decisions that impact your financial position. This app puts information directly into your system without the need for double or sometimes triple handling of the data.”

Traditionally Crop Registration is performed weekly on a small subset of the crop using a tape measure, calipers and a clipboard. Measurements such as plant length, leaf length, stem thickness, flower numbers, fruit sets etc. are all captured during this process.

Greg Prendergast, current managing director for Rohe Produce and former Head Grower for T&G Global Covered Crops, worked with WayBeyond as part of the initial concept stage for Crop Registration.

“I’ve been in the tomato business for over 40 years and Crop Registration has typically been clipboards and excel spreadsheets. It’s a vital part of the growing process to understand the plants rate of growth and how your inputs are impacting your quality and yield,” says Greg.

“From a management perspective it makes it easier and faster to see the information you need at a glance. It has also been specifically built for growers which I think is a bonus.”

The Crop Registration app can enter data in any order that fits with a growers’ registration process – whether they measure horizontally along the top of the plants first or vertically plant by plant. The app can also work offline with data saved to a growers’ device until an internet connection is re-established.

“Crop Registration is another great solution we offer on our FarmRoad platform alongside Data Studio, Activity Feed and Yield Prediction. All that information together really gives growers the edge in the market and this is just the beginning of the plans we have in store over the next 12 months,” says Mr Morgan.

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