Review of the 9th Community Meeting of the Centre for Smart Industrial Agriculture

The 9th Community Meeting of the Centre for Smart Industrial Agriculture (CSIA) focused on the potential for automation in controlled environment agriculture (CEA). The event centred on practical presentations and professional exchange.

The main topics included:

Dr Marc Stift, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME – Introduction to indoor farming and presentation of the Orbiplant system as an innovative system for cultivating protein-rich and pharmaceutically relevant plants. Afterwards, Fraunhofer IME offered a tour of the Orbiplant and OrbiLoop facilities.
Ingo Bläser and Michael Reuter, aquaponik manufaktur GmbH – Presentation of the conceptual and economic differences between hydroponic systems in greenhouses and vertically integrated aquaponics farms, supported by calculation examples.
Dr Jochen Hemming, Wageningen University & Research – Insights into current research on automation in greenhouses, in particular the use of 3D sensor data, digital twins, specialised grippers and AI-supported image processing for precise plant manipulation.

The meeting highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and provided impulses for future cooperation projects in the field of smart agriculture.