Soil & Water
Precise soil maps and robust soil moisture data will help you manage your precious soil and water resources wisely.
Why Soil & Water Matters
Poor soil knowledge can quietly but significantly reduce orchard profitability. This poor knowledge, combined with variable rainfall and soils means trees can experience periods of water stress during critical growth stages like flowering and early fruit growth. This stress cannot be remedied later and often results in fewer fruit, smaller size, and reduced packout. On the flipside, over-irrigation wastes water, can leach nutrients beyond the root zone, and increases the risk of root disease and fruit quality issues. Good soil assessment and moisture monitoring unlock confident irrigation decisions.
A soil assessment is the foundation of orchard design and management. It transforms soil from an unknown variable into a managed asset, allowing growers to make informed decisions about infrastructure investment, planting, irrigation, nutrition, and long-term sustainability.
Soil moisture monitoring turns irrigation from a routine activity to a data-informed management decision. By maintaining optimal water availability in the root zone, growers improve root health, nutrient efficiency, fruit quality and yield consistency; while also reducing water waste and operating costs.
Soil mapping
Fruition’s soil mapping services support a range of end users. We conduct assessments for developers and orchardists looking to understand the soil and water characteristics and limitations of a potential site. This is done as a combination of desktop research and boots-on-the-ground physical assessment of the soil.
We carry out visual and textural analysis of soil horizons to a depth of one metre, using a soil auger to grid sample across the assessment area. This site-specific grid sampling provides much greater detail than publicly available soil maps which are often much broader. Soil horizon depth and characteristics are recorded and interpreted using geospatial tools to compile high-resolution maps that clearly show patterns and variability across the block. These precision maps help define key soil and water properties such as aeration, drainage, water-holding capacity, ponding risk, and surface run-off.
Fruition provides a full written report of the site assessment findings and maps, including any other observations made on site and our consultants’ recommendations. These reports support informed decisions around crop suitability, infrastructure, and block development, providing a strong foundation for irrigation and nutrient system design, as well as ongoing orchard or vineyard management.
While site assessment and soil mapping is best performed before orchard design, Fruition can also help with mapping established orchards to help aid or adapt ongoing management.
The National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) is a New Zealand policy that protects the country’s most fertile soils (LUC 1-3) by directing councils to restrict subdivision, use, and development, ensuring land remains available for long-term food and fibre production. Fruition provides council-ready reports that assess land use capability, soil variability, and productive capacity, helping clients navigate complex policy requirements and strengthen resource consent applications.
Weekly soil moisture monitoring
Fruition’s Weekly Soil Moisture Monitoring service offers a comprehensive and hassle-free approach for growers. No need to find time in your busy day or rely on other staff to check probes or take readings. Fruition’s trained staff come onto the orchard and take care of it all – from site location and install in consultation with you to the weekly readings and reporting of data.
Our weekly service is provided using Neutron Probes which provide highly accurate measurements of soil moisture across a larger soil volume than any other commercial monitoring method. Fruition uses a unique approach of reading three separate soil profiles per site to give an average which ensures that the data represents the area correctly and isn’t biased by a blocked emitter or other localised oddity. Readings are taken at 10cm increments through the soil profile, to understand how water is distributed through the profile, not just the total.
Back in the office, our Terraprobe® software converts the readings into detailed soil water content profiles. Terraprobe® incorporates actual rainfall, applied irrigation volumes, evapotranspiration (ET) and weather forecasts. All of this data is presented on the Fruition Portal in easy-to-interpret graphs and stats. Our qualified consultants combine these insights with your soil moisture management strategy and irrigation system specs to deliver practical irrigation recommendations for the coming week. These recommendations help optimise water use, protect crop performance, and support consistent yield and quality outcomes.
Continuous soil moisture monitoring
Fruition provides continuous soil moisture monitoring in partnership with Sentek Technologies as the North Island East Coast dealer. Sentek probes have been our preferred monitoring technology for nearly 10 years, chosen for their data quality and accuracy.
Unlike other technologies with sensors at two or three depths, Sentek probes are designed specifically for horticultural crops like apples and grapes with sensors at 10cm increments. Probes are typically 90 or 120cm depending on the crop, allowing them to not just cover the active root zone but to help prevent over-irrigation by monitoring below the active depth to ensure irrigation is not pushed ‘too deep’. Different models of Sentek probes can provide soil temperature and salinity readings and can be incorporated with digital water meters to record actual irrigation volumes.
The key benefit of continuous soil moisture monitoring is having access to live information that can be acted upon in real time, allowing growers to really fine-tune their soil moisture management. In producing blocks, this enables deliberate management of the onset and intensity of water stress to optimise fruit size, quality, and colour development. In young blocks this allows for optimal irrigation scheduling, supporting strong canopy development and avoiding stress that can lead to checked growth and production for years to come.
Sentek probe data is available for clients on the Fruition Portal and on Sentek’s own IrriMAX advanced software system – a true agronomist’s tool.
Sentek’s IrriMAX advanced software system allows you to instantly see changes in soil moisture, to show:
- The effectiveness and depth of infiltration of rainfall and irrigation
- The depth of the active root zone at different times of the growing season
- Deep drainage beyond the active root zone
- The amount of plant water uptake and evapotranspiration from different parts of the root zone
Coverage & Crops
Our soil mapping and soil moisture monitoring services are used across a wide range of perennial fruit crops, including apples, pears, kiwifruit, stonefruit, and wine grapes, as well as high-value annual crops, such as onions, squash, and hybrid seed crops – any horticultural crops where irrigation, soil moisture and root-zone management are critical.
With our operations based in Hawke's Bay, we work extensively across the North Island’s East Coast, from Gisborne to Wairarapa. Services are available to new developments and established orchards or vineyards, supporting block-specific decision-making under variable soils, climate and water availability.
What our clients achieve
Fruition's soil moisture services deliver a range of benefits for our clients:
- Improved fruit size outcomes by ensuring plants have sufficient moisture when they need it most
- Better high-grade and packout percentage resulting from improved colouration
- Reduced incidence of splits from better pre-harvest soil moisture deficit management
- Increased dry matter through tailored season-long strategies
- Water use accountability for auditing and compliance requirements
- Environmental benefits such as optimised water and nutrient use
“With the insights from our Sentek probes, we were able to leave the pump off until much later this season. We would never have thought that soil moisture levels were so high coming out of winter. Any irrigation we applied would have been leached beyond the root zone."
Got any questions?
