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Vineland, LetsGrow partner on smart irrigation system in Canada greenhouse
Jan. 9, 2020
For Canada’s greenhouse operators, crop irrigation and finding experienced growers to manage it, are among their greatest challenges.
Historically, greenhouse growers have made decisions about where and when to irrigate, visually checking the water status of plants — often spending several hours and covering tens of kilometres each day. Watering is based more on intuition than measurement and growers tend to base their irrigation decisions on the driest pots. Inevitably, many plants receive more water than they need. Not only does excess watering waste a precious resource, it can also impact quality and yield and may put plants at risk of disease.
To overcome this hurdle, Vineland’s robotics and automation team together with their European partner, LetsGrow, have been busy developing technologies to help greenhouse operators optimize how and when to water plants.
The first generation automated smart irrigation system is set for release fall 2019, thanks to three years of funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev). The system uses soil and climate sensors to collect data on plant water status in real time. Advanced machine learning algorithms use this data to make decisions about where and when to irrigate, which are then conveyed to the grower. Basing decisions on hard data rather than perception help growers avoid unnecessary irrigation.
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