Modeling And Control Of Greenhouse Crop Growth

A discussion of challenges related to the modeling and control of greenhouse crop growth, this book presents state-of-the-art answers to those challenges. The authors model the subsystems involved in successful greenhouse control using different techniques and show how the models obtained can be exploited for simulation or control design; they suggest ideas for the development of physical and/or black-box models for this purpose. Strategies for the control of climate- and irrigation-related variables are brought forward. The uses of PID control and feedforward compensators, both widely used in commercial tools, are summarized. The benefits of advanced control techniques—event-based, robust, and predictive control, for example—are used to improve on the performance of those basic methods. A hierarchical control architecture is developed governed by a high-level multiobjective optimization approach rather than traditional constrained optimization and artificial intelligence techniques. Reference trajectories are found for diurnal and nocturnal temperatures (climate-related setpoints) and electrical conductivity (fertirrigation-related setpoints). The objectives are to maximize profit, fruit quality, and water-use efficiency, these being encouraged by current international rules. Illustrative practical results selected from those obtained in an industrial greenhouse during the last eight years are shown and described. The text of the book is complemented by the use of illustrations, tables and real examples which are helpful in understanding the material. Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth will be of interest to industrial engineers, academic researchers and graduates from agricultural, chemical, and process-control backgrounds.

Greenhouse control system manufacturers produce equipment and software with hundreds of settings and, while they hold training courses on how to adjust these settings, there is as yet no integrated instruction on when or why. Despite rapid growth in the greenhouse industry, growers are still faced with a multitude of variables and no unifying framework from which to choose the best option. Consolidating 30 years of research in greenhouse climate control, Optimal Control of Greenhouse Cultivation utilizes mathmatical models to incorporate the wealth of scientific knowledge into a feasible optimal control methodology for greenhouse crop cultivation. Discussing several different paradigms on greenhouse climate control, it integrates the current research into physical modeling of the greenhouse climate in response to heating, ventilation, and other control variables with the biological modeling of variables such as plant evapo-transpiration and growth. Key topics include state-space greenhouse and crop modeling needed for the design of integrated optimal controllers that exploit rather than mitigate outside weather conditions, especially sunlight, given widely different time scales. The book reviews classical rule-based and multivariable feedback controllers in comparison with the optimal hierarchical control paradigm. It considers real and hypothetical examples including lettuce, tomato, and solar greenhouses and examines experimental results of greenhouse climate control using optimal control software. The book concludes with a discussion of open issues as well as future perspectives and challenges. Providing a tool to automatically determine the most economical controls and settings for their operation, this much-needed book relieves growers of unnecessary control tasks, and allows them to achieve the best possible trade-off between short term savings and optimal harvest yield.

This publication emphasises that an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary cooperation of scientists throughout the world is important in solving the complex problems facing the greenhouse industry. The book itself is an outstanding example of such cooperation.The aim of the book is to describe and analyse crop production in greenhouses in relation to climate control, to redefine the problem of (optimal) control from a theoretical point of view, and to provide a suitable framework for the design of new, scientifically based control systems. Though the principles are generally applicable, they are discussed against the background of the Dutch greenhouse industry. To provide the reader with some background information, the historical developments and the economic position of the Dutch horticultural industry are briefly reviewed in the introductory chapter. ...this book will certainly become a reference as such an extensive review on the greenhouse-crop system and its control is lacking for research and teaching... (Scientia Horticultura)

"Crop Modeling and Decision Support" presents 36 papers selected from the International Symposium on Crop Modeling and Decision Support (ISCMDS-2008), held at Nanjing of China from 19th to 22nd in April, 2008. Many of these papers show the recent advances in modeling crop and soil processes, crop productivity, plant architecture and climate change; the rests describe the developments in model-based decision support systems (DSS), model applications, and integration of crop models with other information technologies. The book is intended for researchers, teachers, engineers, and graduate students on crop modeling and decision support. Dr. Weixing Cao is a professor at Nanjing Agricultural University, China.

Modern greenhouse technology has revolutionized the food supply chain scenario over the past 40 years. Closed-field cultivation by means of agri-cubes, plant factories, vertical farming structures, and roof-top solar greenhouses has become the backbone of sustainable agriculture for producing all-year-round fresh fruits and vegetables. This book is an attempt to explore several profound questions such as how digital technology and simulation models have saved energy in commercial greenhouses, and why growers prefer LPWAN sensors and IoT monitoring devices over the traditional timer-based controllers? How artificial intelligence is capable of performing microclimate prediction and control, and what considerations should be taken into account for implementing desiccant evaporative cooling systems? With case-study examples and field experiments, each chapter highlights some of the most recent solutions and adaptation strategies toward improving the efficiency and sustainability of closed-field crop production systems.

Agricultural production is one of the main keys to the development of healthy societies. It is anticipated that agricultural systems will increasingly have to contend with temperature, humidity and water stress in the near future. This makes the need to increase the efficiency of land and water use ever more urgent. The control and design of greenh