With support from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation an innovative group of companies, institutes and universities will prepare the ground for Danish export of advanced IT for the greenhouse sector.
A new Danish development project will create the world’s most advanced system for consulting, management of energy consumption and other aspects of high technological greenhouses. Over time it can contribute to a significant increase in the Danish export of technology solutions for the greenhouse sector.
The project will last for three years and has an overall budget of almost 2.7 mill. EUR. The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation has just granted 1.4 mill. EUR, the rest is financed by the involved parties. The GTS institute AgroTech, an authorised technological service institute, will run the project and the participants are Copenhagen Business School, Aarhus University, Senmatic, Eglu, Horticultural Advisory Service in Odense and the Danish nursery Gartneriet Hjortebjerg.
The system is already named ”itGrows”. In short the purpose is to combine all the latest technologies in the industry in one system, which will include information and knowledge about the most important tasks in a greenhouse production, from finances and production to growth conditions, energy consumption and climate impact.
Great perspectives
Senior consultant and PhD Oliver Körner from AgroTech will be project facilitator and he has high expectations to the system, which will be outstanding. Energy control is one of the elements:
- Experiences from several years of research show that more than 30 % energy savings in greenhouse nurseries can be obtained by the use of intelligent control. With the new system we expect to identify and document all the facts necessary to identify energy-saving and reduction of production costs, Oliver Körner says and continues:
- No matter which country the greenhouse is located in, the production is forced to become more and more intensive and in this way the greenhouse sector face huge environmental challenges. In Southern Europe these challenges are mainly about water and chemicals, whereas countries with lower temperatures in Northern Europe face challenges about how energy-requiring greenhouse production is. Therefore, the system has a great potential for export. Knowledge, technology and agricultural based innovation in the horticultural area can be a new niche in Danish export.
The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation aims to create research based knowledge and better market opportunities for Danish companies by offering companies and universities risk investments, also to facilitate the long-term innovation in Denmark. With the Budget for 2010 the foundation has increased its grants to 69 mill. EUR, which is a significant increase compared to 2009.
