As a greenhouse manager, you must always be on standby

Added on 31 October 2024

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As a greenhouse manager, you must always be on standby

As a crop manager, Milou Fernandez has to make sure that everything in the greenhouses of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge works and keeps working. During her rounds of the greenhouses, she sees increasingly obvious differences between the development of the teams' tomato plants. As harvest time approaches, Fernandez will be found in the greenhouses even more often. "My role requires a lot of flexibility. I have my own Challenge within the Challenge."

As many as 4,500 pots Milou Fernandez had to sow for the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge. Then to care for them and - once the seeds had grown into plants - to repot them as well. “Fortunately, I didn't have to do this all by myself, but had help from a few colleagues. We distributed the pots among the six greenhouse compartments, five of which are used by the participating teams and one by a team of WUR experts, the reference greenhouse. Once we had prepared all the pots and provided them with a dripper, the Challenge could start running.”