EFI© information system: interest in using growers’ on-field data to evaluate cropping systems and to propose indicator dashboards for peach orchard management

The improvement of agronomic performances of peach (Prunus persica L. Batsch) orchards requires effective control of many technical interventions such as dormant pruning, summer pruning, hand-thinning and harvest management operations. These interventions must be well adapted to the behaviour of each cultivar to attain maximum genetic potential, to produce fruits with the most highly desired commercial and organoleptic qualities and to control production costs because manual operations are highly labour-intensive, representing the main costs in orchards. Because of ripening schedule management in order to adjust the fruit supply to consumer demand throughout the summer season (June until September in France), one plot often corresponds to one cultivar on many horticultural farms. Thus, the grower does not have a possible point of comparison at the farm scale to evaluate if each plot is training at its agronomic and technical optimum. The objective of EFI internet database is to collect information from the greatest number of growers’ plots to elaborate performance indicators of peach-nectarine cultivars, particularly the efficiency of labour (‘EFI’ database name for efficiency). In return, the growers can request the database in order to audit the performance of each plot or cultivar by comparison with all of the data observed on other farms, thanks to dashboard and graph presentations of agro-economic performance indicators. By collecting a large quantity of on-field data, EFI also acts as an observatory of the cropping systems of fruit-bearing trees, making it possible to conduct a large-scale analysis of the influence of training systems on orchard performances.