For the first time, growers will have the opportunity to register plant data using a camera.

New varieties, different control strategies for climate and irrigation, and climate conditions changing every year make growing a dynamic process. To get the optimum out of a plant, an insight into the growing conditions and how the plant reacts to these is necessary. Not just the climate, but also the plant’s location is an important consideration for good analy-sis.

Automatic snapshots

This new LetsGrow.com service offers growers the option to keep an eye on their plants with the help of a camera. Depending on the quality of the camera installed, this can either be pictures from a fixed distance, or – with advanced cameras – remotely controlled pictures, enabling them to zoom in. In this case, growers can set various camera positions for photos to be taken at several fixed spots. The camera moves automatically between these different positions and continuously takes photos. A central computer stores this picture material and makes it available to authorised parties via the Internet. Growers decide themselves who belongs on the list of authorised parties.

A film shows the pictures taken by the camera one after the other. The intervals between the separate pictures taken can be set by growers themselves. This way it is possible to, look at pictures, say, every five minutes, to see how a plant reacts to irrigation during the day. But you can also for in-stance leave a whole day between pictures taken, to evaluate the long-term effect of a set-ting in the climate computer. With the advanced software it is possible to integrate climate data and pictures of the plant. When scrolling through a climate graph, this should make the pictures taken jump to the corresponding period at the same time. This not only enables you to see what the climate was, for instance, four weeks ago, but also how the plant looked at the time.