[Defended thesis] Julien Lamour: Modelling green life of banana fruit, impact of spatial variability

Modelling green life of banana fruit, impact of spatial variability

My name is Julien Lamour and I'm a Cifre doctoral student at Compagnie fruitière. I'm doing my thesis in Montpellier, at Irstea in the UMR ITAP, and I'm also supervised by CIRAD (UMR QualiSud). I have to travel to Cameroon and Guadeloupe to carry out experiments and collect field data on farms. I trained as an agricultural engineer, with particular skills in plant physiology. I took the AgroTIC specialization at Montpellier SupAgro. This enabled me to acquire methods and tools for digital agriculture, such as GIS and IT development.
What made me special? When I started my thesis, I had already worked in a company at Compagnie fruitière, where I did my AgroTIC specialization on a sandwich course. That's what enabled me to identify a subject for my thesis, and to build a research project with my supervisors.

• Starting date: June 2016
• University: University of Montpellier / Institut Agro
• PhD school:  GAIA, Filière APAB, MUSE Montpellier Université d’Excellence
• Scientific field: Agronomy / Plant physiology - Precision agriculture / GIS - Statistics
• Thesis management: Bruno Tisseyre (Institut Agro)
• Thesis supervisors:  Olivier Naud (Inrae, UMR ITAP), Mathieu Léchaudel (Cirad, UMR QualiSud), Alain Normand (Compagnie Fruitière)
•  Funding: Cifre Compagnie Fruitière
• #DigitAg : Labeled PhD – Challenge 8 (Développement agricole au Sud)

Keywords: Precision agriculture, Variogram, Geostatistics, Cosineogram, Observational study, Banana

Abstract: Decision about harvest time of banana bunches is based on the fruit diameter and fruit age, expressed as a number of degree days. Bunches are harvested as soon as they reach a given target diameter or a scheduled sum of degree days. Empirical limits have been determined by Compagnie Fruitière in order to ensure an optimal Green Life (GL) and to prevent fruit ripening during transportation. Fruit GL designates the period between harvest and banana turning green to yellow. Inappropriate harvest date can lead to the loss of all the shipment. Indeed, bananas produce ethylene during their climacteric period which increases ripening of other bananas. Harvest decision is then an economical and agronomical compromise between yield and safe GL. The method currently used has proven to be robust but may not be optimal. We make the hypothesis that GL could be better estimated by taking into account the production environment, using data from the production information system. The analysis of factors affecting the GL should allow to better asses maturity. The approach chosen is to use spatial information, with different resolutions, and to check the influence of pre-harvest conditions on physiology and maturity evolution after the harvest. The field of study is related with precision agriculture, site-specific farming and information and knowledge management. The main scientific issues are: how to use production data to identify effects on banana GL? (Experimental vs observational studies) How to use spatial information with unsynchronized behavior of individual plants?

Contact:  olivier.naud [AT] inrae.fr

Social network:  Linkedin

Communications & Papers

Download the thesis manuscript : Analyse de données spatialisées issues de la production pour améliorer le diagnostic agronomique en bananeraie – Prise en compte de l’asynchronisme de la culture (July 2019)

• Lamour, J., Le Moguedec, G., Naud, O., Léchaudel, M., Taylor, J., et al. (2020) Evaluating the drivers of banana flowering cycle duration using a stochastic model and on farm production data, Precision Agriculture
• Lamour, J., Leroux, C., Naud, O., Lechaudel, M., Le Moguédec G. and Tisseyre, B. (Accepted 2019). Disentangling the sources of chlorophyll-content variability in banana crops using an optical chlorophyll meter. 12th European  Conference  on  Precision  Agriculture  (ECPA  2019),  SupAgro, Montpellier,  France,  July  8–11  2019
• Rabatel, G., Lamour, J., Moura, D. and Naud, O. (Accepted 2019). A multispectral processing chain for chlorophyll content assessment in banana fields by UAV imagery. 12th European  Conference  on  Precision  Agriculture  (ECPA  2019),  SupAgro, Montpellier,  France,  July  8–11  2019
• Leroux, C., Jones, H., Pichon, L., Guillaume, S., Lamour, J., Taylor, J., … and Tisseyre, B. (2018). GeoFIS: An Open Source, Decision-Support Tool for Precision Agriculture Data. Agriculture, 8(6), 73. DOI : doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8060073
• J. Lamour, O. Naud, M. Lechaudel  & B. Tisseyre (2017), Mapping properties of an asynchronous crop: the example of time interval between flowering and maturity of banana. Paper presented at the 11th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA 2017), John McIntyre Centre, Edinburgh, UK, July 16–20 2017, Advances in Animal Biosciences , 8(2), 481-486. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S2040470017000449