Implementing GS1 Traceability Standards for Orchard Chemical Use and Beehive Movements

The Challenge

Significant bee deaths along the New South Wales and Victorian border have raised concerns about the use of chemicals in fruit orchards, highlighting the need for apiarists and orchardists to understand the relationship between chemical use and beehive health. 

This can be done by analysing data on chemical spray application, beehive movement and beehive health. However, challenges related to traceability data are a major hurdle, resulting from a lack of standardisation in data collection and reporting, and limited data infrastructure. 

An integrated traceability system is required to help the orchard and apiary sector better capture and share data. This will enable accurate tracking of chemical applications and beehive movements, facilitating transparency and accountability across the two industries.

The Response

We are supporting our partner, Agriculture Victoria, to investigate how orchard and apiary traceability systems can be improved and expanded. 

Our partners have identified critical traceability events for pollination and defined key data elements, forming a data exchange standard between orchard and apiary systems. This approach involved working with orchardists and apiarists to establish how information is collected and exchanged, and aligning these with leading industry initiatives for farmer-controlled data access and regulatory reporting requirements. Workshops with orchardists, apiarists and key industry stakeholders also helped to determine the additional key data elements and master data required for the identified pollination visibility events.

By refining existing GS1 standards to accommodate orchard-chemical and apiary-related data, such as visual examinations of beehive health, we can ensure that information is uniformly recorded and readily available to enable seamless data sharing.

Based on this framework, the project integrates a ‘Bee-to-Tree’ traceability service into existing orchard and apiary management systems, enabling exemplary advancement of existing systems for contemporary traceability needs. This will also include an almond pollination case study that will demonstrate the practical use of the proposed traceability data exchange solution. 

Together, this will allow for a smooth flow of data and information related to orchard chemical use and beehive health, improving overall traceability efforts in this sector that can later be expanded to events beyond pollination, as well as to other industries.

Who Will Benefit

• Agricultural industry
• Exporters
• Researchers 
• Industry

The Partners

• Agriculture Victoria
• ARDC
• Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries
• NSW Department of Primary Industries
• GS1 Traceability Advisory Group
• BQual Australia
• InformAg
• Hort Innovation
• Y-Trace
• University of Western Australia
• Almond Board of Australia
• LB Ag Tech
• Bee Right
• Fruit Growers Victoria

Target Outcomes

The key outcomes for this project are:

• a consensus set of traceability data and metadata standards for orchardists and apiarists, likely to include provenance, compliance and quality information
• a common data exchange standard and methodology to enable the integration of orchard and apiary data
• an integrated digital traceability solution with contemporary data infrastructure for orchards and apiarists to share information
• demonstrator use cases
• practices for demonstration and training for the broader horticulture sector, including data standards and technologies transferable to other food commodities and industries.

The integrated digital traceability solution (‘Bee-to-Tree’) will be piloted, optimised, and demonstrated to selected apiarists, orchardists and researchers.

Key Resources

• Watch a video summary from Agriculture Victoria
• Watch a video summary from BQual
• Read the feature article in the BQual Industry Newsletter (September 2023, page 2)
• Read the project summary in the BQual Industry Newsletter (December 2023, page 6-7)
• Read the Acta Horticulturae article on the project: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1395.32 (requires login)
• Read the call for participation in the BQual Industry Newsletter (June 2024, page 8)