Autonomous Growing in a Production Setting? Two Tech Companies Are Testing It
April 6, 2022 
Rijk Zwaan and Blue Radix have formed a joint initiative for a unique production comparison with autonomous growing. Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in Rijk Zwaan’s seed production process has many advantages, and the comparison across two departments created a major opportunity to demonstrate the value of autonomous growing in a production situation.
“Rijk Zwaan is constantly on the lookout for new innovations and technologies that can make a positive contribution to the seed production process,” says Simon Molenaar, Manager Production & Supply at Rijk Zwaan. “Autonomous growing can add value to our production process in several areas. Predictability of production, and in particular the quality and quantity, is vitally important for our business operations. Central cultivation guidance can also be carried out more efficiently, because there’s a better overview.”
The Blue Radix Crop Controller offers an AI-driven solution for daily climate control without any intervention from the grower. Crop Controller works autonomously, taking the grower’s crop strategy as its starting point.
“The comparison was carried out at the MR Seeds production site in Bleiswijk here in the Netherlands, where seeds are grown for Rijk Zwaan” says Jan Hanemaaijer, the Blue Radix Crop Advisor who was involved intensively in the project. “In the second half of 2021, we started with the cultivation for cucumber seed production in two departments concurrently. The climate in one department was controlled entirely autonomously by Crop Controller, while its counterpart ran production in the traditional way.”
Every week, grower Maikel van den Berg of MR Seeds and the Rijk Zwaan Crop Supervisor, Wim Groenewegen, discussed the crop and climate strategy, which was adjusted where necessary, according to Hanemaijer. Crop Controller then took care of implementing this strategy in the relevant department, by continuously processing and optimizing all available data.
“Our models in Crop Controller ‘train’ with the historical data and all the greenhouse cultivation data,” Hanemaijer says. “Crop Controller also takes the most recent weather forecasts into account. In the climate computer, Crop Controller controls all the heating and ventilation settings. These are the setpoints for both heating and ventilation temperature, but Blue Radix is also controlling the minimum and maximum bandwidths of the heating pipes and the window installations. Crop Controller indicates which setpoints, including (weather) influences on these setpoints, will be used to control the installations. This is also a strong interaction with the climate computer.”
“The climate strategy is assessed weekly and adjusted if necessary. This lets us keep our finger on the pulse and we know for sure that we are implementing the right strategy,” Maikel says. “Crop Controller optimizes and executes our strategy, but does not (yet) determine what it should be. Of course, we always remain responsible for determining the direction of how the crop should be adjusted. Sometimes there will be more growth control, for example by maintaining a higher daily temperature, while at another time the emphasis may be on a fruit set and we may aim for a greater day-night temperature difference, for instance.”
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