Aaron Middleton, our CTO, gained some valuable insights at the recent Forest Forest Growers Research Ltd (FGR) Research Ltd (FGR) conference.
Devoted to advancing products and processes through innovative digital solutions, bridging R&D to market-ready sustainable technologies and fostering circularity | Thinking in systems & patterns
Very grateful for the opportunity to attend the Forest Growers Research Ltd (FGR) conference held in Dunedin last week. It was excellent. Was inspiring to hear from those at the forefront of innovation within Silviculture. It was clear that there is indeed a high degree of systemic value within a high-forestry future, whether through adoption of novel CLT concepts in steel-timber buildings, bolstering biodiversity indexes (such as Shannon-Weiner Diversity Index or QBS) or through forestry by-products that can spark the Bioeconomy. The prospects for Lignin-derived technologies and nano-cellulose in fostering circularity and distributed manufacturing certainly merits concerted collaborative efforts and co-development. Marc Gaugler‘s talk highlighted this well, presenting Thünen-Institut’s (Report 109) systems thinking perspective on the forestry ecosystem. It was inspiring to learn about the amazing research being undertaken at Scion, ranging from talks on the the management of Red Needle Cast affecting Radiata through to Forest Digital Twins and Virtual Tree Thinning Simulations. It’s clear that a warmer and wetter climate exasperate pathogenic vectors, which will require improved resource mapping, novel response measures (such as anti-fungal metal nanoparticle formulations) and more comprehensive scenario planning - if we are to build resilience into the forestry sector. This is something we feel very passionate about at Cucumber and in conjunction with our technology partners, we are already developing novel biosensing solutions that can help provide high-quality biogenic data about the health of forests, but also boost social-license through a recreational platform. In many respects, we “need to put value on Biodiversity”, as noted by Douglas Macredie during his talk. The potential for automated remote sensing in bolstering the observability of natural assets was made very clear. In this respect, the UAV demonstration by Scott Spooner during the Field Tour hosted by City Forests Limited was excellent. A big thanks to Mike Thornton-Pay and team for sharing their experiences, it was a very informative day. Very thankful for the new connections and looking forward to the continued collaboration within this space. Oscar Montes de Oca Karen Bayne Mark Ross Philip Elworthy Ross Best Patrick Mitchell
