Automation and autonomy for growing strawberry in greenhouses

Lead Applicant: Medhat Moussa

Research Priority: Competitive Production Systems

Program Type: Tier 1

Funding Cycle: 2024/2025

Research Centre: NA

Research Summary: StatsCan recently reported that greenhouse fruit and vegetable sales had increased for the ninth consecutive year, rising 9.3% to $2.0 billion in 2021. Greenhouse strawberries, recently introduced in North America, accounted for $18.5 million of this total, a 19.1% increase from 2020, partly due to increased production (+6.9%). In total, Canada imported $6.6 billion of fresh and frozen fruit, with strawberries one of the top three imports by dollar value. Reducing imports of out-of-season strawberries by increasing Canadian-grown greenhouse strawberries will benefit Canadians. Wide-scale adoption of out-of-season greenhouse strawberries faces challenges, including increased labour costs, compared to other vegetable greenhouse crops. This project aims to reduce this barrier by developing an automation system that can reduce labour costs by up to 75%, thus enabling higher greenhouse strawberry adoption. The solution can potentially be adopted for other greenhouse crops in Canada.