Agricultural technology expert Autogrow has released a wireless smart sensor, Folium, that gives greenhouse operators high density microclimate data to help improve yield, quality and decision making.
According to Autogrow, each Folium sensor gathers environmental data including temperature, humidity, CO2, PAR, RAD and barometric pressure, which growers can view on a heatmap - immediately seeing differences across their grow areas.
Folium enables greenhouse operators unlimited depth of environmental analysis, as the number of sensors is completely scalable.
“We’ve advocated for a long time in the industry that you can’t manage what you don’t measure and the decisions you make are only as good as the sensor technology gathering the data,' said CEO Darryn Keiller. 'Folium will go a long way to giving growers actionable data using state-of-the-art heatmapping technology. It reveals what the eye can’t see.
“According to market analysts, the global greenhouse market is looking to exceed US$40bn in the next five years, so it’s a growth market we are excited to support,' Keiller continued. 'With over two years of research and development, and a huge amount of hard work from my team, it’s fantastic to have Folium in the market and offer greenhouse growers new technology that will substantially impact their bottom line.”
Folium’s target customers are large greenhouse growers who, simply by the size of their operations, require high density climate data to ensure all areas of their facilities are providing the optimal environment for growth.
Chief technology officer Jonathan Morgan notes that sensor technology can be incredibly complex but the experience for the grower should be easy and meaningful.
“We’ve been lucky to work with some fantastic growers throughout the development of Folium who have shared their time, knowledge and grow operations to ensure we are solving some of the pain points they experience when dealing with microclimates,” he said.
“This is just the beginning of what Folium will be able to do,' Morgan added. 'With the way our technology has been designed, we can easily introduce new features that continually support growers. They can also add more Folium units as their business grows and being connected to our cloud platform gives them access anywhere at any time.”
