PNIPU: Smart greenhouse complex for growing plants

2024: Introduction of a smart greenhouse complex for growing plants

Perm Polytechnic scientists have developed a smart greenhouse complex for growing plants. The university announced this on September 18, 2024.

In recent years, to eliminate human involvement in agriculture, autonomous robotic systems have been developed that combine artificial intelligence with plant-growing devices. Such modules allow you to solve complex problems, ensuring stable growth of varietal crops in difficult risky conditions. Perm Polytechnic scientists have developed a smart robotic greenhouse complex that minimizes plant contact with the environment and creates fertilizers based on secondary resources from agricultural sources. The system with constant supervision and automatic feeding of crops will reduce the amount of harmful effluents and save fertilizers by ensuring a closed cycle of cultivation.

The study was carried out as part of the Priority 2030 strategic academic leadership program. Modern agricultural complexes are high-tech systems with a large degree of robotization and automation. In addition, they should strive for a waste-free crop and livestock production process, ideally implementing closed cycles in agriculture.

As of September 2024, agro-industrial effluents are mainly subject to disposal, which is not economically feasible. Scientists of the Perm Polytechnic University previously developed a way to process them into nitrogen-phosphorus fertilizer. This technology formed the basis for the creation of a smart greenhouse system for growing plants, which is able to produce fertilizers itself and use them to feed plants automatically.

For the synthesis of the nutrient solution, a reactor is used in which agricultural effluents are converted into a complex magnesium ammonium phosphate fertilizer - struvite during the chemical reaction. Further, in the form of a suspension, it is dosed to plant roots by a control system.

The fact of the need to add struvite to the roots of plants and the area where they need to be brought is calculated on the basis of the color, shape and distinctive features of the leaves, which are recorded by the video camera. It generates an operational signal that is transmitted to the control device. The function of recognizing the agricultural situation excludes the unreasonable redundancy of the prepared fertilizer, due to which its savings are achieved, - said  Andrei Starostin, associate professor of the Department of Chemical Technologies at PNIPU, candidate of technical sciences.

Polytechnics note that usually in agro-agriculture, the introduction of a nutrient solution to plants is carried out at certain, predetermined time intervals, not taking into account the peculiarities of plant growth. The development of scientists contributes to a more careful attitude towards growing crops, using machine vision to record the lack of certain substances in plants.

And the design of the device in the form of an autonomous greenhouse complex allows you to freely grow crops in areas of risky agriculture, where frequent changes in weather and climatic conditions negatively affect yields.

The complex created by PNIPU scientists can be useful both for growing plants in difficult conditions and for the disposal of agricultural sources without compromising the environment. The capabilities of the device contribute to the economical use of fertilizers and the qualitative maintenance of healthy crop growth.