Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge heats up

Added on 27 February 2020

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Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge heats up

In late December, the second edition of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge organized by Wageningen University in the Netherlands kicked off with five teams competing to remotely grow the most kilograms of cherry tomatoes, of good quality, and with minimum use of resources. So, how's the competition shaping up so far?

This week, the Hoogendoorn Growth Management-led Team AuTomatoes harvested its first cherry tomatoes. According to Hoogendoorn data analyst Evripidis Papadopoulos, this first harvest is promising for the remainder of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge. "We are learning, keep optimizing, and creating innovations. We follow our strategies and we are confident about the results."

Hoogendoorn is collaborating and competing in the six-month-long competition together with Van der Hoeven Horticultural Projects, TU Delft, and KeyGene.

Team AuTomatoes is using a hypothesis that a higher stem density would be beneficial for crop growth. Therefore, they chose to grow their tomato crop with a higher stem density than is normally used in the Netherlands. So far, the team reports that this is working perfectly. "The plants look vigorous and healthy."

Click here to watch the short video of Autonomous Greenhouse Challange

According to Hoogendoorn, intelligent algorithms are used to drive the greenhouse controls. By means of sensor-generated data, the plants provide feedback to the team. Based on this feedback, the algorithms are adjusted to create an optimum growth climate.

Source: Greenhouse Grower
Photo courtesy of Hoogendoorn

Source: Greenhouse Grower