# Management Information Systems for Tree Fruit--1: A Review
## 1 Introduction  
### MIS Definition and Need  
An information system (IS) is comprised of hardware, software, people and procedures to manage the flow of information within an organisation, while a management information system (MIS) is an IS used to provide managers with information to make routine operational decisions. The MIS may be comprised of a dashboard or other reporting tools to present available data in an easily usable format and may also implement models to provide forecasts or other insights from the available data in support of the 'decision support' of day-to-day operations. The term decision support (DS) system has been differentiated from a MIS as providing tools and models in support of longer-term, strategic decision-making [1, 2, 3]. In practice, however, the term DS system is often used in the context of routine operational decision-making, e.g., in references [4, 5, 6, 7]. For the current review, a stricter definition of a DS system has been adopted, with the term MIS adopted for operational management issues. The development of a farm MIS requires the identification of management issues followed by the development of a conceptual model of a management approach to that problem [6]. A complete system will have capabilities of (i) data acquisition and management, (ii) integration of system components, e.g., of irrigation events and an accounting system to provide information on the cost of irrigation, (iii) decision-making based on data inputs and (iv) a communication system, e.g., for notifications and control actions. Farm MISs were traditionally paper-based but are increasingly computer-based as the scale of operation per farm and the amount of data increases. For example, where once the yield of a broadacre field crop was recorded as one value for the entire block, it is now possible to map this character at a spatial resolution of several meters, enabling variable rate fertilisation and other management improvements. A MIS developed for orchard management can be expected to address major tasks in commercial orchard operation, such as the management of irrigation [8; 9], pests (weeds, insects and disease) [10; 11], plant nutrition, manipulation of tree physiology and structure, e.g., through pruning and phytohormone applications [12; 13], and harvest, e.g., planning harvest labour, packing and marketing needs [14]. Many farm MIS technical features and adoption drivers and barriers will be common across all agricultural production systems, with greater commonality expected within the plant production systems of perennial and annual horticultural production and broadacre cropping than with intensive and extensive animal production systems. For example, a report on the use of system analysis methods to define the design requirements of a farm MIS [6], explanations for the lack of success in the adoption of a computer-based MIS in farming systems [15], and a review of irrigation MISs [16], all have relevance to tree-fruit production systems. While many issues are common to annual cropping operations, the management of tree-fruit operations differs from cropping operations in the perennialty of the production system, the relative lack of monitoring systems and tools for spatially localised actions and the extent of manual operations, with a need for large seasonal workforces involved in pruning and harvest operations. For example, in broadacre cropping, predictive (preharvest) yield estimates based on a crop's normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) mapping and/or actual (at-harvest) yield measurements from harvester yield monitors are now regularly used to inform management operations such as fertilisation, harvest planning and marketing [17]. In tree-fruit production systems, however, harvest load information has, until recently, required tedious manual data collection and thus was rarely done rigorously. Technical advances in machine vision and other areas are now allowing for the preharvest count and sizing of fruit on-tree [18].