Pollination is crucial for food production. Traditionally this job has been left to natural pollinators like the birds and bees and is particularly important for tomato yields. The majority of fresh tomatoes are grown indoors, which poses the question, how do you pollinate a crop without bees? Protected Cropping growers have, over the years have come up with innovative solutions, including leaf blowers, vibrating wands, even the whacking stick method. But PolyBee is rolling out a new solution with some of Australia’s biggest tomato growers.

PolyBee are a Singapore based startup who have developed an autonomous solution using the latest in drone and computer vision technologies. I’m Sam Turner and welcome to the protected cropping podcast. On this weeks episode we are joined by Siddarth Jadhav from PolyBee.

New technologies and solutions like autonomous pollinators will play an increasingly important role in Australia’s protected cropping industry. With Australia’s high labour costs and low margins, leaning into new technologies to help reduce cost of production will allow us to compete in diverse markets on the global stage.

Siddharth Jadhav's LinkedIn

Protected Cropping Australia's LinkedIn