How an Updated Software Tool Can Help Vegetable Growers Optimize Their Harvest
March 23, 2022 
Grodan kicked off the new growing season with the release of its update e-Gro Platform. In response to feedback from top growers worldwide, in combination with continuous testing, the company has increased the focus on optimization in the Production Module for more efficient harvest planning. Additionally, the presentation options in the Reports Module have been updated to provide an all-in-one overview of a company’s growing strategy. These new improvements are designed to help growers gain better insights into their targeted growing strategy.
When it comes to product development and innovation, Grodan’s primary goal is to ensure that all its products fit with the growing strategy and cultivation process in high-tech greenhouses. Therefore, the company always closely involves growers from all over the world in the development process. In this case, this included holding interviews to gather feedback about what should be included into the new release to meet growers’ needs.
Production Module Improvements for Better Harvest Planning
In terms of production, growers face a number of challenges, including the complexity of planning the required labor, packing, and shipping activities, as well as challenges related to pricing, marketing, and selling their crops. This makes the Production Module one of the key aspects of the e-Gro platform because it provides insights into the expected harvest. The e-Gro Yield Forecaster enables growers to optimize their planning, thus improving their efficiency and reducing costs. It also saves a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on manually analyzing historical data and making calculations, whether about crop production and harvests or sales figures and prices. Therefore, Grodan is keen to ensure that the Production Module continues to fully meet growers’ needs.
Gap Analysis
The growers’ feedback received during the interviews while preparing for the new release confirmed that e-Gro users greatly appreciate the yield prediction for the next four weeks, which is unique in the market. The forecast is based on historical growing data combined with artificial intelligence (AI). However, the interviews also revealed that growers sometimes adjust their yield strategies during the production process and they indicated that it would be useful to have an option to enter harvest plans in e-Gro. In the new release, the Production Module has been adapted so that users can now compare the predicted yield against their own harvest plans, which is key in improving the harvest strategy and understanding whether there are any gaps between what is planned and what is predicted.
In addition to this improvement, Grodan has reworked other production information, such as including fruit weight as a new key performance indicator (KPI). Since a low fruit weight is an important indication of the set plant balance, the new KPI will give growers an even better understanding of the harvest quality. Besides this, in line with the remote crop management trend, the Total Season Overview has been optimized for mobile use in the new release to further improve the user experience. This now enables growers to use a smartphone to analyze their planned, actual, and prognosed harvest. Other improvements include better output analysis of the registered production information and harvest benchmarking views in the current season.
All-in-one Overviews
Creating a report typically takes hours, requires multiple software tools, and calls for data to be gathered from various sources. The Reports Module enables growers to save a lot of precious time in this context and is another of the core modules of e-Gro. During interviews with growers to discuss this module, a number of them indicated that they would like to be able to print out the information. They also made several valuable suggestions about how the information could be presented. In response to this feedback, the Reports Module in the new release now captures, saves, and displays all the key information and data in one comprehensive week overview, linked to specific crop types. There’s no need for Excel or other tools; growers can now find all the information they need in one place. Thanks to these new, improved view options, users can generate better analysis of key growing data about a specific crop. The data can also be exported to PDF format for printing.
Through these and other improvements, Grodan is continuing to help growers make optimal use of all the available data. As a result, growers can create better growing strategies as the basis for higher yields, better quality, and more profitability.
Subscribe to eNewsletter
