The Ontario government is supporting greenhouse growers by investing over $3.6m in 12 new, innovative projects.
These are designed to help develop new technologies, recover from the impact of Covid-19 and enhance competitiveness and innovation.
One of these approved projects is ‘Autonomous Greenhouse Management'. This is a collaboration between the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers (OGVG) and Blue Radix, an independent Dutch AI-tech specialist for the international greenhouse industry.
This project is supported through the Greenhouse Competitiveness and Innovation Initiative, a cost-share programme funded by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and delivered by the Agricultural Adaptation Council.
“Together with OGVG we introduce autonomous growing with Crop Controller to Ontario vegetable growers,” said Ronald Hoek, CEO of Blue Radix. “Crop Controller is a service: data models and algorithms control the greenhouse installations 24/7, supported by off-site Autonomous Greenhouse Managers with in-depth knowledge about crops, energy and data.
'With autonomous steering of the greenhouse installations, the crop strategy is put into practice with artificial intelligence,' Hoek explained. 'Crop Controller is not developed to replace growers. The grower is still needed to define the crop strategy. Ultimately, they can manage more hectares and worry less about repetitive actions and routine thinking. The algorithms do the work for them in their daily operations.”
He expressed thanks to the Ontario government for the GCII funding, and said it would help greenhouse businesses improve their productivity with adopting autonomous growing.
The main objectives of the project include researching the specific needs of Canadian growers (compared to Dutch growers) related to autonomous greenhouse management and translate these needs into product features, and researching and implementing the adjustments that must be made to improve the match of Crop Controller with different Canadian (Ontario) climate conditions.
The project also aims to demonstrate the working of the Blue Radix data models and algorithms, and share knowledge with market peers and help growers to work with this new technology in their day-to-day operations.
OGVG will select three vegetable greenhouse production locations across Ontario to participate in the project.
