Together with participants, experts and growers, we explored smart solutions for indoor farming with a focus on business and societal challenges. Renske Landeweert, Programme manager Agri Food, provided an introduction about OnePlanet Research Center and the Agri Food domain, where disrupting, new technologies for the sector are being explored and developed.
Smart, sensor-based solutions will be a big step towards ultra-controlled greenhouse production that, in turn, will be a milestone in Indoor Autonomous Farming. The innovations developed will provide farmers and greenhouse management companies new opportunities for sustainable food production. – OnePlanet Research Center
In break-out sessions, participants zoomed in on specific challenges, trends, innovations, and funding opportunities in their industries.
Presentation 1: Greenhouse Horticulture
Dr.ir. Anja Dieleman, senior researcher, and team leader Physiology at the business unit Greenhouse Horticulture of Wageningen University & Research, opened this session with an Insightful talk on the challenges and trends in Indoor farming. She mentioned the importance of a systems approach, since the challenges in this industry are on multiple levels.
Presentation 2: SAIA Agrobotics
After this presentation Ruud Barth gave a talk about his business SAIA Robotics. He discussed how his current robotics solution could disrupt the whole greenhouse industry. He pointed out the biggest challenges that he is currently facing, working on this innovation.
Presentation 3: OnePlanet Research Center
In this session, Renske Landeweert of OnePlanet Research center provided an introduction of the program on indoor farming. She presented SME companies with information on how to collaborate with OnePlanet.
The plenary session ended with a presentation by Suradj Hiralal of Oost NL, who gave an overview of the funding possibilities for innovation in indoor farming.
Break out sessions
1. Novel sensing technologies of plant data
The event continued with two break-out sessions. In the first break out ‘the novel sensing technologies of plant data’ where discussed.
The main insights:
- learning to know the real (long term) challenges and requirements of the indoor farmers is crucial
- to translate the diversity of available sensing technologies & solutions
- towards minimal viable products and successful introduction in the market.
2. Monitoring and influencing indoor climate & emissions
The second break out session was on: ‘monitoring and influencing indoor climate, emissions and in & outputs.’ High tech experts on the field of vision technology, vertical farming, odour sensing tech and greenhouse growers and experts participated in this session. The interaction between the greenhouse grower and the high-tech entrepreneurs developed in a thought-provoking brainstorm on the possible applications in the indoor farming industry.
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