With a strong El Niño expected to shape the coming summer, HortPlus and Harvest are highlighting a simple way for orchardists in New Zealand and Australia to put their local weather data to work.
Growers with a Harvest weather station can kick off the process of sending their data to the MetWatch crop protection platform with the click of a button in the Harvest Data Portal. Once the HortPlus teamconfirms the connection, the station's data appears in MetWatch, where it feedsplant disease models, weather dashboards and other decision-support tools.
HortPlus Chief Executive MikeBarley says more than 170 Harvest stations are already connected to MetWatch,and the integration is designed to make it easier for others to join them.
"Harvest stations givegrowers dependable data from their own orchard," he says. "MetWatchbuilds on that with plant disease models and crop protection tools, so growerscan see what the conditions mean for their crop.
"We sell Harveststations and work closely with many other top weather station suppliers, allchosen for their expertise and customer support."
The ability to link Harveststation data into MetWatch is timely. Earth Sciences NZ (formerly NIWA) isforecasting drier spells in northern and eastern regions of New Zealand andstronger westerly winds through spring, with peak El Niño conditions expectedover the 2026-27 summer. Conditions are likely to vary from region to region,and from block to block.
Harvest Sales Manager Sam Tanner says thatvariability makes local weather data even more valuable this year.
"In a season like this,growers need to know what's happening in their own orchard, not just theirregion,” he says.
“MetWatch is a powerful toolfor interpreting the high-quality data our stations provide and turning it intoinsight they can act on."
Growers might, for example,use an in-orchard station to feed local conditions into disease-risk models tohelp time protectant sprays, or use the same data to fine-tune irrigationduring a dry spell.
Both companies have plans toexpand into Australia following nearly three decades of New Zealand operation.Harvest already has dozens of weather stations on Australian orchards andvineyards, and HortPlus has a data-access arrangement with Australia’s Bureauof Meteorology to enable data from the bureau’s more than 600 weather stationsto flow directly into MetWatch.
> Want to sync your Harvest weather Station data to your MetWatch account? Read quick 'Granting access to weather station data in the Harvest Portal' guide.
