Koppert and Blue Radix winners of GreenTech awards 2024

The winners of the GreenTech awards were announced at the opening of GreenTech Amsterdam 2024. Koppert’s aigital assistant wins the concept award of GreenTech Amsterdam 2024, Blue Radix wins the innovation award for its integrated autonomous climate & irrigation control system. Held between June 11th and 13^th at RAI Amsterdam, GreenTech 2024 awarded again the most advanced concepts and innovations for greenhouse horticulture. Egon Janssen the July chairman explains why: “Artificial Intelligence and data science are developing really fast. The winners of the concept and innovation award show that this new technology can help to improve sustainability and reduce labour shortage. The jury was impressed by the scalability of the winning innovation and concept, which can result in a huge impact in the coming years”. GreenTech was proud to showcase at the show floor including the longlist of the 51 novelties of which 47 were submitted for the awards. More information about them can be found here, and the 6 nominees on the website.

Koppert’s digital assistant

It offers personalized & context-rich IPM support by merging data from growers’ crop management systems & our unique IPM knowledge. The Digital Assistant embodies a revolutionary leap forward, surpassing superficial chat bot interaction. It provides personalized and context-rich support to growers and consultants for unique IPM challenges, by incorporating vital data from grower’s own crop management system (e.g. climate, pest prevalence, treatments) and our unique knowledge of IPM management and agricultural practices. Egon Janssen is impressed by the approach of Koppert: “Knowledge of plagues and diseases is widely available in literature. The knowledge level of growers varies depending on experience. The initiative to use a ChatGPT like approach to assist growers can create a huge increase of the average knowledge level of growers”. 

Blue Radix integrated autonomous climate & irrigation control
Blue Radix crop controller integrates autonomous climate and irrigation control. Managing this is 80% of climate computer work using AI. Blue Radix enhances and integrates its proven autonomous climate control with autonomous Irrigation Control, leveraging advanced AI. B.R. crop controller ensures precise climate and irrigation execution, reducing climate computer work by 80%. It revolutionizes daily greenhouse management, delivering 5% profit increase & 7% yield improvement, 10% less water and fertilizer usage, and 15% energy savings.
Egon Janssen explains: “We have seen many innovations using AI and data science to optimize a single process in the greenhouse. Since there are many processes which influence each other the real challenge is to optimize the total operation. Blue Radix combines autonomous climate and water control which is an important step towards autonomous greenhouses”.

Jury
The jury of the GreenTech Innovation & Concept Awards 2024 consists of:

• Chairman: Egon Janssen, TNO (Netherlands)
• Silke Hemming, Wageningen University Research (Germany)
• Perry van Adrichem, HortiTech B.V. (Netherlands)
• Peter Zwinkels, Technokas (Netherlands)
• Roel Vanderbruggen, Proefcentrum Hoogstraten (Belgium)
• Bart van Meurs, Division Q (Netherlands)
• Jolanda Heistek, Royal FloraHolland (Netherlands)
• Tijl Hoefnagels, Rubio (Netherlands)

The jury’s advisory committee consists of:

• Brian Sparks, Greenhouse Grower (USA)
• Leonardo Capitanio, Vivai Capitanio (Italy)
• Enrico Verhoef, Total Greenhouse Service (Mexico)
• Heinrich Dressler, Haymarket (Germany)

More information about them can be found here, and the 6 nominees on the website.