Going Beyond Yield Prediction in Greenhouse Tomatoes

Posted by Brian Sparks|July 5, 2023

For greenhouse tomato growers, predicting yield is a crucial practice that drives both short-term response and long-term strategy within the business. While many growers aim for a high level of yield prediction accuracy, they may not achieve it consistently.

A new whitepaper from WayBeyond, an agriculture software and data management company, outlines a holistic approach to yield forecasting that examines:

Why solely chasing the holy grail of high accuracy yield prediction isn’t the right approach
How unexpected yield swings impact prediction accuracy and what causes them
How interpreting yield prediction with additional contextual data improves decision making

The whitepaper, “Beyond Yield Prediction: The importance of Climate and Context in Tomato Production” was written by two WayBeyond team members:

Mpatisi Moyo, Head of Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Moyo holds a Master’s in Medical Laboratory Sciences from Massey University, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Health Sciences from the University of Auckland. He is the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence lead at WayBeyond. His team focuses on combining biology, data, and AI to build prediction and recommendation tools to help growers improve efficiency in their production.
Tharindu Weeraratne, Director of Crop Science & Agronomy, After obtaining his BSc. in Botany in Sri Lanka, he conducted research in postharvest biology and technology of cut flowers and foliage, then did his Ph.D. in Plant Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Weeraratne leads the Crop Science, Agronomy Research and Consulting at WayBeyond, and works with the AI research and engineering teams to provide cutting-edge solutions for growers.

The whitepaper is available for download here.