Western Sydney University research to drive automated indoor cropping

The research will address commercial challenges around labour costs, pollination, and diseases to support Australian growers by researching innovative and cost-effective solutions for polytunnels, glasshouses and vertical farms.

Lead researcher Professor Oula Ghannoum, from Western Sydney University's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment and National Vegetable Protected Cropping Centre, said remote sensing was widely used in broadacre farming, through cameras and sensors attached to drones or gantries, but its application to highly managed and controlled facilities was still in its infancy.

"The rapidly growing protected cropping industry faces multiple challenges related to the cost and training of skilled labour; limitations in capturing, integrating, storing, and processing data from various cameras and sensors; developing imaging platforms suitable for protected facilities; and training the model," Professor Ghannoum said.

"The research aims to address these challenges by establishing a flexible decision support system."

Innovation in protected cropping is part of a global priority to increase the sustainability and efficiency of food production systems challenged by urbanisation, population growth and climate change.

However, most protected cropping-related technologies to date have been developed for and tested in regions with temperate, cool or desert climates.

Co-funded by the Commonwealth Government through the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre, the research team will develop and test non-invasive ways to monitor key crop attributes.

These include yield, quality, stress, disease and pollination, providing foundation research that supports Australia's expanding protected cropping sector in transitioning to advanced, high-tech decision support systems.

Distinguished Professor David Tissue from Western Sydney University's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment said adapting new protected cropping technologies to subtropical and tropical climate conditions would reduce reliance on imported technology.

It also has the potential to lower the cost of production for protected crops, bolster resilience in Australia's domestic food supply chain, and increase our global competitiveness, he said.

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Initially, the research team will test and develop cost-effective imaging and sensing solutions for near-real-time monitoring of crop growth, nutrition, health, fruit yield and quality in the NVPCC experimental glasshouse.

Following the validation of solutions deemed most promising, trials will commence in commercial facilities including Vertical Patch's high-tech indoor urban vertical farms in Sydney's CBD and a large-scale vegetable production facility on NSW's Central Coast.

Vertical Patch chief executive officer Wayne Ford said innovative solutions behind the technology would lower the carbon footprint of farming practices, including decreasing water use and transportation time, utilising solar energy and making the most of unused spaces.

"We are agri-tech innovators, changing the shape of agriculture in Australia," Mr Ford said.

"An emerging market overseas, vertical farming looks to increase production and to mitigate the detrimental environmental and social impacts of conventional agriculture on our land."

"This partnership will capitalise on data collection and management, as well as optimising the light spectrum reaching plants, which is crucial for fully indoor vertical farming.

"The aim is to optimise our farm systems to maximise our supply of premium, hyper-local fresh produce to local restaurants and to export our farms and technology overseas."

Future Food Systems CRC chief executive officer Dr James Krahe said the project highlighted the potential of the collaboration.

"This is a foundation project in the protected cropping space - one with the potential to bring about transformational change in this exciting horticultural sector, and greater profits for growers."

Other industry partners include the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Episteme Solutions and Rijk Zwaan.

The five-and-a-half year 'Automated Crop Monitoring for Protected Cropping systems' project will run until mid-2028.

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