JORDAN STATION, CANADA: Dutch-based Blue Radix, a company specialised in artificial intelligence for the greenhouse industry announced today it has won the inaugural Greenhouse Technology Awards in the international suppliers’ category. Judges praised the company’s winning computer model for autonomous greenhouse growth, Crop Controller. The Blue Radix model, they say, allows greenhouse growers to spend less time in the greenhouse, but focus on the changes and innovation they want to add to their crop strategy instead.
Canadian Greenhouse Conference
The inaugural Greenhouse Technology Awards are part of Canada’s online Seeds of Change Greenhouse Conference that will be held between 6-7 October 2021. Both events celebrate the greenhouse industry’s thriving technical scene, at home and abroad.
Blue Radix’ Crop Controller, has been installed on several production nurseries in the Netherlands, the USA, Mexico, Canada and the Czech Republic.
Praise from the jury
Judges applauded the use of AI to integrate all greenhouse data in one space. This approach helps greenhouse growers make analyses and decisions this way. The panel of judges also recognised the importance in easing the burden for growers managing many acres and filling the knowledge gap for incoming staff.
They noted the impressive track record with trialling of the Netherlands-based technology being conducted and finetuned with growers in Canada, as well as synergistic partnerships with industry stakeholders and suppliers.
“Honoured to receive this prestigious award”
“We are honoured to receive this prestigious award,” said Ronald Hoek, CEO of Blue Radix. “Crop Controller helps growers and greenhouse owners optimising their results and making their operation scalable. Most importantly, our customers recognise this value. With Crop Controller, greenhouse operations becomes future proof. Growers can manage more hectares and pay attention to other responsibilities without continuously having to worry about the greenhouse climate on a hourly or daily basis.”
Crop Controller helps to create a cultivation planning with optimal target conditions for the greenhouse climate. During the entire growth period, AI continuously uses all available data from greenhouse sensors, climate boxes and meteo-data providers to forecast and optimize the climate and irrigation according to the cultivation planning.
Crop Controller integrates all the data and advises on how to adjust the settings of greenhouse automation hardware to achieve and maintain optimal greenhouse conditions in the most cost-efficient way.
With the grower’s consent, the Crop Controller sends, continuously and autonomously, the correct setpoints via the climate computer to the installations. This means growers achieve their goals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and no longer need to analyze all the greenhouse data or manually set the climate computer. Growers can now shift their focus to increasing the quality of the crop strategy and devote more attention and creativity to scaling and innovation.
Multiple greenhouse growers in Canada and other parts of the globe attested to the software’s potential and are projected to manage a far greater area of production space while improving yields by at least four to 10 per cent and reducing operational costs by five per cent.
It’s a service
AI delivers the most optimal value when it’s smartly combined with the human touch. So, we combine Crop Controller with the support of an off-site Autonomous Greenhouse Manager. The Autonomous Greenhouse Manager helps the grower to get started with autonomous growing, continuously monitors the situation in the greenhouse and is there to proactively discuss ideas, results and improvements with the grower.
