Abstract
The global 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) has reached breakthroughs in several areas, however, not yet in horticulture. An international competition on “autonomous greenhouses” aimed to combine horticultural expertise with AI to make breakthroughs in fresh food production with fewer resources. Five international teams, consisting of scientists, professionals, and students with different backgrounds in horticulture and AI, participated in a greenhouse growing experiment. Each team had a 96 m2 modern greenhouse compartment to grow a cucumber crop remotely during a 4-month-period. Each compartment was equipped with standard actuators (heating, ventilation, screening, lighting, fogging, CO2 supply, water and nutrient supply). Control setpoints were remotely determined by teams using their own AI algorithms. Actuators were operated by a process computer. Different sensors continuously collected measurements. Setpoints and measurements were exchanged via a digital interface. Achievements in AI-controlled compartments were compared with a manually operated reference. Detailed results on cucumber yield, resource use, and net profit obtained by teams are explained in this paper. We can conclude that in general AI performed well in controlling a greenhouse. One team outperformed the manually-grown reference.
Highlights
The global population is increasing rapidly together with the demand for healthy fresh food [1].The greenhouse industry can play an important role providing fresh food, such as fruits and vegetables being high in vitamins and minerals
One team (Sonoma) had the highest production and was able to continue this, as is shown by the highest curve slope. This team obtained this harvest with a high daily light integral (Figure 4), as they assumed that with a higher daily light integral a greater harvest could be obtained
If fruit load is too high in relation to photosynthetic capacity, young fruits will will which abort, which willahave a negative impact on total production
Summary
The global population is increasing rapidly together with the demand for healthy fresh food [1]. The greenhouse industry can play an important role providing fresh food, such as fruits and vegetables being high in vitamins and minerals. Greenhouses allow a high crop production per area combined with a high water use efficiency per unit of produce [2]. The area of greenhouse production is increasing [3]. The greenhouse industry encounters difficulties finding enough skilled labor to manage crop production [4]. A crop manager must have a high level of knowledge and experience in order to control crop growth. As farms become larger, monitoring all details of the various greenhouse compartments becomes more demanding. Resources (water, fossil energy) are becoming scarcer, which causes an urgent need for maximum resource efficiency
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