Gardin

Dr. Chiara Volpi, senior researcher at Enza, said:

"We tested the Gardin technology on some of our breeding lines. Being able to see how the plants respond to stress in real-time has been very valuable for understanding their potential. Not only this will make us aware of stress well before it becomes visible; it will also provide an objective and quantifiable way of understanding the effect of variability in the environment and of differences between varieties, as well as the efficacy of treatments. The Gardin platform measured crucial parameters of plant performance completely autonomously and directly where the plants grew without the need for any intervention from our team. This, together with the analytics capabilities provided by the Gardin team, enabled us to gather important data from our research experiments aimed at accelerating variety development"

Expanding our collaboration offers great potential for both organisations. Dr. Fabrizio Ticchiarelli-Marjot, Gardin’s lead biologist commented:

"Chiara and Duy are world class scientists, and working with them and Enza Zaden has been an absolute delight. We were able to observe unforeseen patterns in the way some vegetable crop varieties responded to abiotic stress and we hope these insights will aid Enza Zaden in bringing these crops to market as soon as possible. What excites me the most about next year is that we will be expanding the range of species we will work on together, helping as many people at Enza Zaden as possible. This will not only accelerate their pipelines, but also ensure Gardin’s predictive analytics is trained from the very start on some of the most innovative crops that will reach the market. This will put us in a great place to serve as many commercial growers as possible, all over the world."

https://www.gardin.co.uk/news/bbbb2c4c-779f-11ed-a1eb-0242ac120002

Addressing Variability
A key challenge for commercial glasshouse growers is microclimate variability within the same greenhouse zone, which leads to non-uniform distributions of temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and irradiation. This heterogeneity creates problems for crop growth, production, and quality. Gardin's technology provides easy to read, actionable insights through measurements of photosynthetic performance, which are highly sensitive early indicators of stress, providing farmers with a way to monitor their crop’s health in real-time.

Positive Results
The collaboration, conducted in partnership with award-winning, British fruit farm Boxford Farms, involved the monitoring of the grower's strawberry plants in two areas of their commercial glasshouse – the historically best and worse yielding areas. Gardin's monitoring system detected immediate differences in plant health between the two areas, with the lower yield area seeing a continuous deterioration in health, while the higher yield area maintained a steady health status.

"Our technology's ability to detect these differences in plant health and provide real-time insights to farmers is what sets it apart," said Dr. Steven Grundy, Senior Plant Scientist at Gardin. "The trial results show a promising positive correlation between the change in plant health and the yield of the strawberries, demonstrating the value of our technology in improving crop health and boosting yield."

Mike Marita, Boxford’s Farm Manager said:

"We have noticed before that plants in certain areas of our glasshouse were getting stressed, but it was difficult to know exactly when or what was going wrong. The Gardin solution allows us to see decline in health in real-time and well before it becomes visible. This in turn allows us to adjust our growing strategy and farm operations. The correlations between Gardin insights and yields were very promising, and we hope they will allow us to optimise performance next season "

A Fruitful Partnership
Gardin is delighted to continue its partnership with Boxford Farms into 2023, monitoring strawberries throughout their growing season. This partnership will help Boxford optimise farm performance and further demonstrate the company's commitment to improving crop health and yield for commercial glasshouse growers.

https://www.gardin.co.uk/news/7301ee0a-aed1-11ed-afa1-0242ac120002

BBC Click - Agritech and the Future of Farming programme

Click looks at agriculture and the technology that might be helping to make it more sustainable, featuring AI-powered imaging sensors that can read the minds of plants.