We are all familiar with that barcodes that appear on just about every item that we buy. But barcodes aren’t just confined to being used on goods or produce; they are also used in many other innovative ways.
A banana plantation owner from Western Australia has just started to barcode her banana trees so that she can keep a digital record of her fruit. Darrell Munro from Munro’s Plantation in Carnarvon says:
“It’s just a way of recording what’s happening in the banana patch, if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it,”
“At the moment we’re forecasting when the bunches are going to be ready and how many bunches we’ve got ready, so when a flower comes out I put a tag in and record it, upload it on to the computer, and you’ve got graphs which show you exactly what you’ll be picking in the coming weeks.”
The data that Ms Munro collects gives her an advantage over other growers in the region as efficiency levels are much better when her crop is successfully managed.