Danish horticultural IT to conquer the world

Potential Danish export of advanced IT for the horticultural industry

The world's most advanced system. That is the objective of a new Danish development project, which is going to create an IT system that gathers information about the relevant aspects in terms of horticultural production.

It covers aspects such as finances, production, growth conditions, energy consumption and environmental impact. The system is to help hi-tech horticultural producers control their energy consumption, among other things.

From the universities to the nursery gardens

CBS is represented by researchers from the Department of Informatics.

- Our purpose is to ensure that it becomes a user-friendly system that the horticultural producers can and will actually use. We do not want it to be an experimental system that will never be applied outside the universities, says Associate Professor Torkil Clemmensen.

He says that the system is going to be a platform for the horticultural producers to share knowledge about and experience with fungal growth, energy consumption, etc.

Energy savings of more than 30 per cent

Senior Adviser and PhD Oliver Körner from AgroTech says that energy management is just one of the elements.

- Several years of research have shown that horticultural producers can achieve energy savings of more than 30 per cent by means of intelligent management. With this new system, we expect to identify and document all the things needed for us to introduce the right energy-saving and production-enhancing measures, says Oliver Körner.

The environmental challenges

The group behind the project expect that the system will have great export potential, as horticultural producers all over the world face great environmental challenges. In Southern Europe, the challenges mainly concern water and chemicals, whereas Northern Europe deals with the massive energy consumption of greenhouses.

Financing

The project is scheduled to run for the next three years and has a total budget of just under DKK 20 million. The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation has just grated the project DKK 10.5 million, the rest is financed by the involved parties. The project is led by the GTS institute AgroTech with participation from CBS, Aarhus University, Senmatic A/S, Eglu A/S, the Danish Horticultural Advisory Service in Odense and the Hjortebjerg A/S garden centre.

Read more on the website of the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation.