May 2024 - 10

AUTOMATION
The computer vision aspect of
counting has been around for a
long time. The challenge for
greenhouse growers has been
getting imagery of 100% of
the plants. At IUNU, we've
developed a rail system
that allows cameras to
travel long distances
in order to cover
all of your crops.
This allows growers
to optimize growing
strategies for different crops
with automated comprehensive
data collection because it
gathers information from every
plant in the greenhouse.
PEST AND DISEASE MANAGEMENT
Another major opportunity for automated data
collection is pest and disease management. Like
inventory counting, scouting is a very manual process
today. Whether you send folks out to scout crops or
you use yellow sticky cards/tape to do quick checks on
insects, you're likely running a reactive process.
With a manual inspection process, you can only detect
an issue when someone physically sees it. This often is
too late. Growers can experience losses of between 5%
and 25% due to disease and pests.
With technology, growers can replace the manual
scouting process, scout more frequently and detect
issues earlier, leading to lower losses. One lettuce grower
we work with was able to catch chlorosis in their crop
within 24 hours of appearing. With some adjustments to
the system, they were able to remediate the issue and
eliminate the potential revenue loss.
Tomato growers right now are being devastated by
tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV). The virus
presents visually, and work is being done by companies
to determine how early it can be detected using computer
vision. This could save the industry billions of dollars in
losses each year.
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MAY 2024 GPNMAG.COM
Data for data's sake is useless. But collecting good data
and using it to drive better decision-making can be hugely
valuable to your business. Disease and pest management
is one of those areas. By shifting from reactive decisionmaking
to proactive decision-making, growers can increase
profits by reducing the risk of pest and disease losses.
CROP QUALITY AND YIELD
Crop steering is another area that can be improved
drastically with more data. Today, growers are looking at
crop data to make decisions already. You may weigh crops
to record yield or measure sample crop data as part of
crop registration. All of this information helps determine
what the climate set points should be, when to open and
close vents or shading, when to turn lights on and off,
when to irrigate and more.
Crop steering is a good example where new sources of
data can be incredibly valuable. Much of the day-to-day
changes of a plant happen quietly - they are too small
for us to notice. Technology, however, can identify very
small changes, allowing us more visibility into how crops
are performing in real time.
Germination success is one of the prime drivers into
high quality and high yielding crops. With computer
vision, we can analyze germination performance. By
calculating the germination success for every plant, we
can see what might be causing failures (and successes).
Is it isolated by a climate zone? Are failures tied to high
humidity days? Is it a seed issue? All of this information
helps us make better growing and business decisions.
Growers are using technology to view growth curves for
each individual inventory group as well. Software makes
it possible to evaluate this data by crop variety, by date
or by location. With LUNA AI (IUNU's flagship product),
growers can compare best performing groups against the
current group in order to see if you're on par with your
best performers. Growers can use this data to steer more
proactively and more effectively.
SALES FORECASTING
In addition to inventory counts, forecasting yield is one
of the most critical functions of an organization. For some
growers, this process starts and stops with historical
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May 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2024
