This week, Source.ag launched Source Irrigation Control, which is a piece of intelligent AI-based software that provides growers with a co-pilot to autonomously control irrigation. The company's founders, Rien Kamman, and Ernst van Bruggen, are happy to reveal more about the ins and outs of this irrigation system, which they see as "an almost hidden opportunity."
On a Monday afternoon in February, we spoke to Rien as well as to Lotte Adema and Helen Brunemann at the Amsterdam office. Here, we learned that Source.ag has grown rapidly in recent years. The result is more and more people are behind more and more computers. The latest addition to the Source office is a small greenhouse where ideas can be tested. This year, an intern hackathon will take place at this same greenhouse.
Rien Kamman and Ernst van Bruggen, founders of Source.ag
A solution that autonomously executes an irrigation strategy
This is not to say that developing new software for growers is not challenging enough for Rien. On the contrary, he explains how millions have been invested in research and development in three areas. "We continuously worked on building three products. First, we digitalized the operation. The software that helps growers find their optimal cultivation strategy came second. Now we are ready to help growers implement that strategy."
The Source Irrigation Control, which has been launched at HortiContact, allows them to do so. It is an innovative solution that provides growers with autonomous execution of their irrigation strategy. Growers only have to enter the desired irrigation result. After which Source Irrigation Control ensures the automatic roll-out of a strategy that optimizes the desired outcome.
Complexity on a smaller scale
Over the past three years, Source has seen how growers play 'a very complex chess game' every day. Rien says: "Growers have to make dozens of very diverse decisions every day. They actually play two games at the same time: one focused on the long-term strategy (finding the optimal cultivation strategy) and one on the shorter-term (optimally implementing the cultivation strategy). The shorter term, let's say the next 24 to 48 hours, is just as complex but only on a smaller scale. At Source Irrigation Control, this is our focus."
In practice, growers already know what outcome they want to achieve and express this in numbers. However, this means that growers continuously make adjustments in their climate computer, for instance, when the weather changes. This makes it very difficult to spend your time on something else.
Now, Source Irrigation Control does that chess work. Growers can only make their moves with the information that is currently available. Instead, the autonomous system thinks much further ahead and maps out an optimal strategy. Lotte emphasizes that growers can see what the system invents. "Anyone who logs in sees what has happened in the past 24 hours, as is already the case with current grower systems, but what is new is that they also see what will happen in the next 48 hours."
A grower can choose to (temporarily) not implement the Source irrigation Control strategy after seeing the plan. Switching on and off also remains possible with the autonomous tool. In all cases, Source Irrigation Control continues to make predictions. Click here to enlarge the image.
A small dataset is enough, thanks to good models
Source Irrigation Control gratefully uses the knowledge about plant physiology that it has acquired over the past three years. Lotte says: "We ultimately created two models from piles of data. A water uptake model and a nutrient uptake model."
The data for the use of Source Irrigation Control comes from Source Track. "We only need forty days of data. Thanks to three years of data, we only have to 'tweak' the data for the grower's unique situation in terms of the variety and the greenhouse. She gives an example. "With the rise of new ToBRFV-resistant varieties, you see that a grower can no longer rely on knowledge about how the plant normally reacted in a certain situation. For us, the type of variety and the type of greenhouse do not matter. Thanks to a strong base, the models smoothly adapt to the specific plant. This requires a small data set."
Pilot
During the pilot phase, three growers already used the autonomous irrigation tool. The three growers, tomato growers Agro Care and CombiVliet and pepper grower Rainbow Growers, all had a different climate computer (from Hoogendoorn, Priva, and Ridder). Sensors also differed. Source Irrigation Control needs data about irrigation, drain (volume and EC), and the substrate. Weighing scales were used in tomato cultivation, while pepper cultivation used a sensor in the substrate.
The grower sets goals at the start and expresses this in a number of three performance indicators: digestion, drain percentage, and drain EC. Source Irrigation Control updates the data every fifteen minutes while executing the strategy. Lotte: "In addition to sensor data, we also use weather forecasts for an area of two square kilometers. On days with changeable weather, we were particularly able to outperform growers in the pilot because of Source Irrigation Control's automation. This is not possible for a grower."
A positive side-effect
A significant side effect of using Source's latest tool is that AI is also used to clean data. Lotte has seen this happening: growers who already worked with sensors found that the use of Source Irrigation Control ensured that their data was upgraded. "This enables growers to better explain and respond to the results of sensor data."
The first step in autonomous crop management has now been taken. The later introduction of Source Cultivate is focused on the grower's long-term strategy. It gradually provides growers with modern tools that optimize cultivation without totally replacing the grower. "That is not our goal," Rien emphasizes. Until now, the focus has often been on high-tech crops. Source Irrigation Control Source also sees opportunities in mid-tech. Rien: "In these cases, Climate control is often not possible due to the set-up, but irrigation control is possible from which a lot can be gained."
For more information:
Source.ag
info@source.ag
www.source.ag