Elizabeth Mosqueda is an Assistant Professor at the California State University, Monterey Bay.
Richard Smith is a Vegetable Crop Production and Weed Science Farm Advisor with UC Cooperative Extension.
Steve Fennimore is a Cooperative Extension Weed...

Steve Fennimore, UC Davis Plant Sciences faculty member and UC Cooperative Extension weed specialist, and colleagues received the 2020 EurAgEng Outstanding Paper Award for the paper, “Crop Signalling: A Novel Crop Recognition Technique for Robotic Control,” which was published in Biosystems Engineering.

The research represents a breakthrough in differentiating weeds from crops using machine vision systems. The technology could help California growers address challenges...

Mark your calendar!

July 15, 2019

In vegetable production, growers cultivate most of the bed leaving only a 4-inch wide uncultivated band around the seedline. Weeds not controlled by preemergent herbicides or cultural practices in the uncultivated band are ultimately controlled by hand. Labor costs have increased and availability has decreased in the last 4 – 5 years which has spurred grower interest in automated weeder technology. In the last two to three years, automated weeders have become available in the Salinas Valley. All current machines were developed and manufactured in Europe: the Robovator developed in Denmark by Poulsen Engineering and distributed by Pacific Ag Rentals (Salinas); the Steketee IC developed in the Netherlands and distributed by Sutton...