Artificial Intelligence Will Continue to Grow in Greenhouse Facilities
August 3, 2021 Artificial intelligence (AI) was once a sci-fi dream and is now becoming more of a reality with each passing year.
Some greenhouse growers have already used the technology, but the future looks bright for AI as it starts to become a useful tool in breeding, maintenance, and shipping.
Dean Kopsell, Professor and Chair of Environmental Horticulture Department at the University of Florida, recently conducted a webinar through American Floral Endowment discussing the future of AI in the horticulture industry. Here is what he sees as the future of AI in the industry.
How AI Will Affect Plant Development
AI is capable of working with genetics, according to Kopsell. It will be a key tool for rapid phenotyping.
Rapid phenotyping allows a machine to capture the genotypic data from an individual plant or crop and mix and match it with another crop to achieve the desired result.
“The trick is, you are trying to find the right recipe,” Kopsell says. “And now, when you overlay that with the opportunity for gene editing, we don’t have to genetically transform plants anymore. We can just turn on different areas of the DNA strand for different results.”
AI will also become important for marketing plants to consumers and growers. The technology is currently used by companies like Google and Amazon to specifically target ads to you.
With that in mind, the more data that is collected, the smarter AI will become. It would allow growers and retailers to grow specific crops for their customers based on their spending habits.
How AI Will Be Used for Maintenance
AI is smart enough to learn how to take care of crops, too.
There are currently a few sensors and controllers available to growers that help check the status of a crop and apply nutrients, crop protection, or water to a specific crop. These sensors take pictures of the crop to monitor for any disease or pests that may harm crop yield.
Eventually, crop care could become fully automated to the point where a computer would monitor data and decide when it would be best to water or apply pest control, according to Kopsell. All of this will depend on how much data growers are willing to put into AI.
What Is Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is a relatively new technology that allows for data to be visible in the real world and in real-time.
A good example of this technology is smart glasses, where the wearer can see different data depending on what they are looking at.
By using AR technology, greenhouse growers will be able to monitor plant levels and growth cycles in real-time with data on what the crop may need and if it will be ready on time for a shipment.
Technology like this is already coming to market with Plant Vision, which uses a user’s iPad or iPhone to snap pictures of a crop to judge how the plant is doing.
“By using infrared or ultraviolet light, it shows a manager what is needed to be done in real-time,” Kopsell says. “The virtual reality aspect of it will look at the predictable data to see if the crop is going to be ready when it ships.”
This technology will also be useful for students and professors who can use AR to describe a certain plant disease or how far along a crop is.
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