Dr. Krishna Nemali, Associate Professor
Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University
Thursday February 15th, at 3:30pm, HORT 117 or via Zoom.
“Crop Monitoring and Growth-based Automation Using Low-cost Digital Sensors in Controlled Environment Agriculture”
Abstract: Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) involves crop production inside protected structures such as greenhouses and indoor farms. These systems enable year-round production of food crops in regions with high demand (e.g., urban areas) and harsh climate. Due to high operational costs per unit area, it is extremely important to reduce crop losses from sub-optimal environmental conditions in CEA. This requires regular crop monitoring for early detection of production-related issues and adjusting environment to optimize crop growth. In majority of CEA systems, crop monitoring is based on visual appearance of
plants. High plant numbers and multi-level crop production in CEA make visual crop monitoring more challenging and less accurate. Moreover, environmental control in CEA is not directly based on crop growth but on prevailing environmental conditions inside a facility. Although monitoring environment is useful, it is accurate to control environment based on crop growth. Digital (IoT) sensors that capture plant images and quantify crop growth can be used to simultaneously and accurately monitor crop growth from multiple locations in CEA systems. It is possible to interface digital sensors to electronic valves that control equipment (e.g., lighting systems, fertilizer injectors) and develop decision-support software that enable environmental control based on crop growth. In this presentation, I will share case studies where digital sensors were successfully used to monitor plants and identify production-related issues in CEA. Further, I will demonstrate a prototype of ‘crop growth-based’ automation system that utilizes low-cost digital sensors and decision-support software to control production environment in CEA.