Preface

Closed-field crop production systems by means of controlled environments and high-tech greenhouses have faced significant technical improvements in terms of structural design, resource management, decision support systems, simulation models, and automation-control systems. It is predicted that by 2050, more than 70% of the world's population will live in the cities. This scenario challenges researchers and greenhouse growers to incorporate digital technology and examine different innovative cultivation techniques in order to secure the supply chain of fresh fruits and vegetables. In some regions where land is scarce, conventional greenhouses are being replaced with vertical farms, roof-top greenhouses, plant factories, and modular agri-cube units for urban farming in order to respond to the food security of the increasing world population. The main objectives of these platforms are increasing productivity and reducing expenses in a sustainable manner. The nextgeneration greenhouses are expected to produce "twice as much food using half as many resources." To achieve this, engineering solutions and technological developments have been integrated with agricultural sciences to reduce carbon footprint and minimize the dependencies on energy, space, soil, water, and natural light.

For modern high-tech greenhouses to attain their objectives and keep the production competitive, specific attention needs to be paid to the technical aspects of automation and control systems, environmental control methods, structural design, energy management, and cultural practices. This presented book aims to expand and highlight these aspects from an academic perspective in separate chapters. In the first chapter, Shamshiri et al. demonstrate real-time monitoring and wireless automation instruments that are integrated with advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence for providing a flexible control on the greenhouse environment. The second chapter is dedicated to the fundamentals of microclimate control systems followed by an overview of the advances in the desiccant and evaporative cooling systems. According to Sultan et al., solar-operated desiccant-based evaporative cooling systems could be an alternate option for next-generation greenhouse air-conditioning. The third chapter demonstrates a real-world example, the Canadian Integrated Northern Greenhouse (CING), that provides an adaptive design solution for growing fresh food year-round for northern Canadians. According to Leroux and Lefsrud, using container farming, the combination of natural and supplemental light has the potential to reduce energy needs linked to lighting. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss radiation exchange in greenhouses, as well as the requirements and the challenges for soilless crop production. Various plant growth models and simulation analyses for dynamic assessment of cropgrowth microenvironments prior to and during the actual cultivation are reviewed and summarized in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, the kinetic modeling of combustion and gasification zones for embracing greenhouse effects through biomass gasification is demonstrated. Chapter 8 presents an affordable open-source prototype for automated irrigation and environmental monitoring that can be used for experimenting and validating different control algorithms.

To ensure food security and self-sustainability, the next-generation greenhouses should incorporate advances in controlled-environment agriculture, energy optimization models, crop models, artificial lighting, and benefits from the concepts of IoT devices, web-based data sharing applications, smart sensors, and artificial intelligent control algorithms for automation of the whole system. Most of the solutions and strategies described in this book represent a small but valuable contribution of the greenhouse research community toward higher yield and quality, reducing production losses, improving the sustainability of closed-field cultivation, and preserving natural resources. However, in most cases, depending on the region and the crop to be cultivated, the cost of the high-tech greenhouses relative to the increase in yield and profitability is not clearly well known. A constant joint effort and collaboration between growers, policymakers, and researchers will strengthen such an effort to arrive at an accurate economic analysis and justification for the high start-up costs involved with the next-generation greenhouses.

> **Redmond R. Shamshiri** Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy, Potsdam, Germany

> > **1**

Leaf wetness

**1. Introduction**

**Chapter 1**

**Abstract**

Greenhouse Automation Using

*Redmond R. Shamshiri, Ibrahim A. Hameed, Kelly R. Thorp,* 

*Siva K. Balasundram, Sanaz Shafian, Mohammad Fatemieh,* 

Automation of greenhouse environment using simple timer-based actuators or by means of conventional control algorithms that require feedbacks from offline sensors for switching devices are not efficient solutions in large-scale modern greenhouses. Wireless instruments that are integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and knowledge-based decision support systems have attracted growers' attention due to their implementation flexibility, contribution to energy reduction, and yield predictability. Sustainable production of fruits and vegetables under greenhouse environments with reduced energy inputs entails proper integration of the existing climate control systems with IoT automation in order to incorporate real-time data transfer from multiple sensors into AI algorithms and crop growth models using cloud-based streaming systems. This chapter provides an overview of such an automation workflow in greenhouse environments by means of distributed wireless nodes that are custom-designed based on the powerful dualcore 32-bit microcontroller with LoRa modulation at 868 MHz. Sample results from commercial and research greenhouse experiments with the IoT hardware and software have been provided to show connection stability, robustness, and reliability. The presented setup allows deployment of AI on embedded hardware units such as CPUs and GPUs, or on cloud-based streaming systems that collect precise measurements from multiple sensors in different locations inside greenhouse environments.

**Keywords:** LoRaWAN, Greenhouse, Datalogger, Internet of Things, AgroTech,

Control and automation of microclimate and fertigation inside greenhouses have contributed to improving the sustainability of closed-field environment agriculture by reducing water, fertilizer, and energy demand, while at the same time increasing yield and profit [1]. The trend of environmental monitoring in modern farming is towards shifting from offline systems to wireless and cloud-based data

*Muhammad Sultan, Benjamin Mahns and Saba Samiei*

Wireless Sensors and IoT

Artificial Intelligence

Instruments Integrated with

## **Chapter 1**
