Developing a digital twin of apple production and supply chain ecosystems

Perennial horticulture is facing many challenges as consumers and societies reconsider what is expected of future food systems in the face of population growth and urbanisation, climate change, biodiversity loss, and supply chain and other shocks. Digital technologies offer many opportunities for increasing the precision and sophistication of production systems and supply chains in response to these challenges. However, many current agritech products and services address only single needs and do not explicitly draw on the richness of our knowledge in plant and ecological sciences. These limitations can be addressed through digital twins, which are increasingly being adopted across diverse fields to monitor, analyse, simulate and control complex systems. In this paper we describe the approach The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited (Plant & Food Research) is adopting to develop a digital twin to leverage the transformative opportunities offered through the purposeful integration of biology and digital technologies. Our goal is to dynamically couple physical components of apple production and supply chain systems with their virtual analogues. The digital twin will direct sensors and external interfaces to obtain input data from the real world, and prescribe optimal interventions based on models that robustly simulate the impact of selected biotic and abiotic stresses on key physiological, ecological and quality modifying processes. We are approaching this task through a series of tightly coordinated research programmes organised around the themes of: building the digital ecosystem; new models of the perennial horticulture ecosystem; and developing and deploying digital twins. We expect that this digital twin can offer new opportunities to increase the profitability, resilience and sustainability of perennial crop systems.