Aotearoa New Zealand’s kiwifruit sector contributed 38%, by far the highest value to horticultural exports in 2020. The current outlook sees global trade volumes continuing to rise by 45% by 2025 and by 2030, the sector’s GDP contribution will double. As a response, a further 2800 hectare is being licensed to kiwifruit production in the next few years. However, water access has been identified as one of the main risk factors that investors will face. Furthermore, growers are already progressively required to justify their water take through rigorous reporting depending on the use of surface water, ground water or community water schemes.Therefore, managing water resources sustainably is crucial to New Zealand’s horticultural sector. We know we must manage these resources by optimising the use of rainfall and applied water to avoid water stress in crops. Irrigators are being required to monitor their use of water and many now use soil moisture measurement (through probes in the ground) as a means of better informing their irrigation management. While this is a major step forward and accurate information can be provided for the point measured, it is also recognised that orchard soils are often highly variable and further methods need to be implemented to create a cost-effective measurement network.This project uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which is a form of microwave sensing to provide a series of spatial maps of canopy water status to monitor water stress. The first crop it will be used in is kiwifruit. Microwave remote sensing technology can offer a viable method of capturing plant stress variability over individual orchards and blocks, with a high level of granularity and regularity. This granular information can be readily integrated with the accurate point source data from soil moisture probes to create a very effective measurement network. Microwave satellites orbit over New Zealand on a very regular basis providing a number of advantages over conventional optical means, it is not affected by cloud cover, and it captures images day or night. This removes some of the major limitations of optical satellite systems and provides a means of having highly regular and reliable measurement.The outcomes of this project feed into the development of digital tools for growers utilising this technology that will enable them to make better decisions around increasing their harvestable yield and reducing fruit value variability within the orchard. This proj...