Working towards an autonomous greenhouse in the AGROS project

Added on 04 July 2022

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Working towards an autonomous greenhouse in the AGROS project

Greenhouse horticulture plays a key role in fresh fruit and vegetable production for a growing population. Over the past decades, greenhouse businesses have become larger and larger, and cultivation increasingly complex: growers nowadays have to balance production with the use of energy, water, and nutrients. To top it all off, there is scarcity of skilled labour that can oversee all the complex processes in a greenhouse.

At present, a grower has to decide on the right setpoints for all parameters at every moment: heating, ventilation, dehumidification, shading, artificial lighting, crop management actions, scouting for pests and diseases, and release of predators or precision spraying are among the decisions to be made. A well-educated and very experienced grower can oversee most aspects of such a system. However, soon there will be too few of these highly skilled growers worldwide.

"What we need, is an autonomous greenhouse", says Anja Dieleman, AGROS project leader and researcher at WUR Greenhouse Horticulture. "In such a greenhouse, the crop takes center stage and cultivation is controlled based on pre-determined goals. Prerequisites are extensive knowledge of crop physiology, accurate sensors that can measure relevant crop characteristics, and intelligent algorithms to control the greenhouse autonomously."

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Photo Courtesy of Wageningen University & Research