New Ag International SEPT/OCT 2020
The goal of the 2019-20 Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge was to produce a cherry tomato crop within six months with high quality, high productivity and high resource efficiency in WUR greenhouses.
The winner of the 2nd autonomous greenhouse challenge organized by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Tencent was announced in June 2020.
From the five teams that made it to the final, Team Automatoes was the winner, with team captain Leonard Baart de la Faille accepting the award.
Call for entries were announced in June 2019. The other four finalists were Team IUA.CAAS, Team DIGILOG, The Automators, and Team AiCU.
The goal of the 2019-20 challenge was to produce a cherry tomato crop within six months with high quality, high productivity and high resource efficiency in WUR greenhouses. Points were on offer for net profitability, sustainability and AI strategy.
The tomatoes were cultivated in WUR greenhouses in Bleiswijk, Netherlands.
There were six greenhouses – one for each of the five finalists and one for the reference grower. The greenhouses had the same equipment, such as standard actuators and sensors to control temperature, ventilation, screens, artificial lighting, CO2 and irrigation, stated WUR. Climate and irrigation set points, as well as pruning strategies, were designed remotely using AI algorithms. The manual labour to carry out instructions was provided by the university, such as topping out and harvesting the tomatoes.
The finalists were scored on three criteria – net profit, sustainability and AI strategy. There was a different weighting for each category. Higher production might increase profit, but the higher consumption of resources could impact the sustainability score.
All five teams reached a better performance on net profit than the reference grower, according to Dr. Silke Hemming, head of the WUR Greenhouse Technology research team, and the lead organizer of the challenge. The reference growers had the highest production but had used more resources.
“I am indeed surprised that all five teams have beaten the growers [on profit],” Hemming told New Ag International. “I think it is a very interesting result and one which might stimulate the development of autonomous growing, or at least data driven growing, even more in the future.”
When summarizing the key take-home messages, Hemming said the teams used different climate strategies that often resulted in the same production volume, but different sustainability scores.
Hemming also said objective data was needed on all aspects of growing and this would be a pre-condition for the success of AI. A lack of data can hamper development with AI. Data interpretation is seen as an area that could gain from AI, while crop handling was also seen as important for autonomous growing and AI could be the driver for robotic handling.
“We have demonstrated that AI is a game changer for increasing greenhouse productivity,” said David Wallerstein, CXO of Tencent, during his opening presentation. Wallerstein also highlighted the importance of the energy requirement of greenhouses and suggested that some regions of the world that have low-cost renewable energy could become new centres for greenhouse production.
Hemming said a decision is still pending on a third edition. “We are still busy with publishing results on the second one. An update might be expected beginning of next year.”
The greenhouses had the same equipment, such as standard actuators and sensors to control temperature, ventilation, screens, artificial lighting, carbon dioxide, and irrigation.
By Eugene Gerden
Despite the pandemic associated with this economic recession, the Russian Ministry of Agriculture has no plans to revise its earlier announced strategies for the doubling of area under greenhouses in the country within the next several years, according to recent statements by some senior officials of the ministry.
According to ministry data, last year’s total volume of greenhouse vegetable production in Russia amounted to almost 1.2 million tonnes, which is significantly higher than previous years’ figures.
At the end of 2019, the government set a target to double these figures by 2023-24. This is mainly due to the growing demand for these vegetables from local customers, as well as an interest for the implementation of such projects from investors.
The pandemic had sparked concerns from both the state and local investors about the possible suspension of the implementation of the majority of these investment projects.
According to Dmitry Patrushev with the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, implementation of these plans will be achieved by the allocation of both state and private investments in the sector, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the industry.
“So far, plans for a significant expansion of area under greenhouses in Russia have been announced by such leading local producers as agro-industrial holding EKO-culture, PJSC Magnit, GC Avilon, MC Gorkunov, MC Technologies of greenhouse growth, GC GreenInvest, Victoria Estate Group and some others,” said Patrushev. “At the same time, the Russian government plans to provide serious benefits to producers operating in this field which should help them to implement these plans.”
Part of these plans is allocating financial subsidies in both direct and indirect form to producers. In the case of direct subsidies, the allocated funds will cover up to 20 percent of their costs associated with the building of new greenhouses in Russia. In addition to subsidies is providing tax, customs and other benefits to domestic farmers, which operate in this market segment.
The government hopes the provision of these funds will speed building of new, modern greenhouses in Russia with the annual output of 100 kilograms (kg) of cucumber and 60-80 kg of tomatoes per square metre. At present, a significant part of vegetables in Russia is produced in technically outdated greenhouses, which has the annual capacity of only 35-37 kg of vegetables per square metre.
A pollinating robot designed by an Israeli company is being tested in Australia. The robot uses artificial intelligence to shoot air pulses at tomato flowers, replicating bumblebee buzz pollination.
According to a story at ABC News online, Israel’s Arugga AI Farming is hoping its technology can transform Australia's greenhouse farming sector, especially greenhouse tomatoes, which are currently pollinated by hand.
After successful trials in Israel, the company had targeted Australia because it did not have bumblebees. The robot autonomously drives along the rows, finds flowers that are ready for pollination using artificial intelligence, and sends air pulses to vibrate the flowers in a very specific manner to imitate buzz pollination as performed by bumblebees.
Arugga's pollinating robot is being tested at Costa Group's multi-million-dollar greenhouse facility in Guyra, New South Wales.
The company is focusing initially on pollinating tomatoes but is also looking at opportunities to improve yields for other greenhouse crops.
