Posted on 13 November 2020 in 
Digital Twins, the future in plant phenotyping – TechnoHouse by Rijk Zwaan
Rijk Zwaan, a major vegetable breeder hosts a regular online show called Techno House that addresses hot topics around plant breeding and horticulture. Seeing that the show has great content for the phenotyping community we gathered the content here for you.
The topic of this episode: “Digital Twins”. Three experts were invited to share thoughts and vision on digital twins but from different perspectives.
- Grégoire Hummel, Phenospex
- Ben Scheres, Rijk Zwaan
- Gert Kootstra, University of Wageningen
Rijk Zwaan produced some short and crispy videos introducing the different experts and which are definitely worth to watch.
World class sensors are here, the services are next
Grégoire Hummel, CEO of Phenospex
“The future of digital twins? Practical use cases in
science, breeding, harvesting, quality control and even marketing”
The last 10 years were marked by developing world class sensors to generate the digital twin, the next 10 years the focus will be on translating the data into information. There will be a lot of new services that will be built on this information, like decision making tools for farmers, robots to harvest crops or programs to help breeders identify the right phenotypes.
Use digital twins to reduce breeding cycles with gene prediction
Ben Scheres, Research Manager at Rijk Zwaan
“With the help of digital twins we can predict what our plants do, reduce the breeding cycles and identify the required genetic changes to match the needs of the growers.”
The industry is integrating the newest plant phenotyping tools at a rapid pace. Ben explains how Rijk Zwaan is taking breeding to the next level by mapping and understanding the genotypes. With this information they want to predict the genotypes of the desired crops.
Providing robots with vision and intelligence for next phase in agriculture
Gert Kootstra, Professor, University of Wageningen
“Digital twins not only help in the breeding aspects, but will be used to facilitate the automation of production“
Academia are on the fore front of developing the next new things. The best insights come from the leading universities in Agriculture like the University Wageningen. Gert takes us on a tour through their labs and greenhouses.
Future Episodes of TechnoHouse
Edition 2 | 11 February 2021 | Software Development
Rijk Zwaan is committed to supporting growers and partners. In these partnerships we like to take a personal approach. In a growing market and digitizing world, we cannot visit all our partners in person. More and more, we use technology to aid us. We do, however want to offer the same level of personal service. So how do you get to know and build a relationship with your partners using technology? Using data, design thinking, modern architecture, rapid development teams and smart tooling we can offer new digital ideas and services to our partners fast. Using technology, we can test and measure what works and what does not and easily adapt to those findings. In that way, we create a personal experience and offer the right services to our partners.
Edition 3 | 27 May 2021 | Sensor Data for Growing Decisions
Data is everywhere, and our industry is no exception with the rise of ‘smart horticulture’. The data collected by sensors can be used to minimize the use of resources such as water and soil and maximize plant yields. How far does the technology go?
