New 'KID' in the menu!
Hydroponics has emerged as the one of the most promising solution for microgreen production, as it requires no arable land, reduces the usage of clean water and can be used in any urban setting. Within this framework, GOHYDRO aims at developing a cost-efficient smart-sensing ICT platform capable of monitoring the crop health and nutrient content of hydroponically cultivated microgreens in order to optimize the cultivation process and allow the harvest of the best possible products. GOHYDRO aspires to culminate in the development of a platform that will shift paradigm on how AI-driven technological innovation can become an affordable, accessible-by-all tool applicable to all forms of urban farming. Towards this, the project will produce a multi-modal sensor kit measuring nutritional and lighting requirements of microgreens and combine it with a multi-model machine learning solution that will guide growers to optimize microgreens production in accordance with the environment where their hydroponic unit is installed and operated. In a nutshell, the proposal aims at developing an innovative easy-to-use e-agronomist which will assist any grower to fine-tune and optimize hydroponic production
The impacts of light spectrum combinations, light intensity and nutrient use on the microgreen yield quantity and quality is an emerging research due to the huge effects of light on the growth and production potential of microgreens.
Food production is blamed for up to 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions in addition to pollution of the aquatic resources and off-site pollution to the environment due to intensive use of fossil-based inputs in traditional industrial agriculture. Hence, hydroponics is a high potential technology within controlled environment agriculture that can produce high crop yields with minimum use of water and nutrients due to reuse and recycling of water and nutrients in a hydroponic set-up.
Microgreens are relatively new food crops in the menu and are known to be nutrient dense packed with vitamins, minerals and health-benefiting phytocompounds. We validated the benefits of light spectrum combinations, light intensity and nutrient use on the microgreen yield quality and quantity under standard and high planting density of microgreens under controlled environmental production trials at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark
The research is still at the early stage and there are huge research gaps to validate the effects of light intensity, spectrum combinations, photoperiod and nutrient use on the microgeens and leafy greens in general
