The world population is increasing rapidly together with the demand for healthy fresh food. The greenhouse industry can play an important role, but encounters difficulties finding skilled staff to manage crop production. Artificial intelligence (AI) reaches breakthroughs in several areas, however, not yet in horticulture.
The second international “Autonomous greenhouse challenge” 2019/20 aimed at combining horticultural expertise with AI to make breakthroughs in fresh food production with fewer resources. International teams conducted an experiment to grow remotely a cherry tomato crop during a 6-month period in a greenhouse of WUR, The Netherlands.
Maximize net profit with AI algorithms
The goal was to maximize net profit by increasing yield and fruit quality and therefore income and limiting resource use and therefore costs. Each team had a greenhouse compartment equipped with standard actuators and sensors (heating, ventilation, screening, artificial lighting, fogging, CO2 supply, irrigation), teams added a variety of their own sensors to monitor the crop. Climate and irrigation control setpoints and crop pruning strategies were remotely determined by teams by AI algorithms.
Join the webinar
Learn more on the possibilities of artificial intelligence in remote greenhouse tomato growing. Keynote by David Wallerstein, CXO Tencent, analysis of results by Silke Hemming, WUR and announcement of the winning team of our this year’s challenge.
Webinar organized by Greentech on 8 June 9:00-10:30 h CET.
Source: Wageningen University & Research