Full Environmental Control Smart Greenhouse System Creates a New Blue Ocean for Taiwan's Agriculture
Smart agriculture intelligent greenhouse system, in a hydroponic greenhouse maintained at a constant temperature of 20 to 24 degrees Celsius, pinkish-purple LED light sources shine on tender green leaves, creating a dreamy atmosphere. Nutrient solution gurgles and circulates through densely laid pipes, the only subtle sound in this space. Locally rare vegetables such as green curly tendrils, butterhead lettuce, curly-leaf lettuce and Caesar romaine sway their leaves in the breeze from small fans, the greenhouse thriving with life; close your eyes, and it is like arriving in a hidden paradise.
In the past, people always used "living at the mercy of the heavens" to describe the instability of farmers' income, especially in Taiwan, which lies in subtropical and tropical regions, where climate characteristics such as high summer temperatures and frequent typhoons make agricultural development face enormous challenges. However, thanks to technology, a well-developed smart greenhouse system can reduce climate risks, solve difficulties for Taiwan's agriculture, and ignite new hope.
In a hydroponic greenhouse maintained at a constant temperature of 20 to 24 degrees Celsius, pinkish-purple LED light sources shine on tender green leaves, creating a dreamy atmosphere. Nutrient solution gurgles and circulates through densely laid pipes, the only subtle sound in this space. Locally rare vegetables such as green curly tendrils, butterhead lettuce, curly-leaf lettuce and Caesar romaine sway their leaves in the breeze from small fans, the greenhouse thriving with life; close your eyes, and it is like arriving in a hidden paradise.
An Old Hardware Factory Transformed into a Hydroponic Farm
This is a hardware factory located in Xihu, Changhua. Xihu Township is an important distribution center for Taiwan's cabbages, napa cabbages and cauliflower, and the Xihu Fruit and Vegetable Market is one of the three major fruit and vegetable markets in Taiwan. Beyond vast crisscrossing vegetable fields, a tall building with a corrugated iron roof stands in the fields. If not for the idle processing machines inside the building, silently yet solemnly proclaiming the golden age this hardware factory once had, we might not know that it once shipped three full containers of barbecue grill products to Walmart in the United States, earning considerable foreign exchange for Taiwan.
However, after the rise of mainland China, the factory faced the challenge of transformation. As the second generation of the hardware factory, Ma Daoxin, head of Caiqing Industrial, decided to return home to help his father's factory transform. In a chat with a friend, he learned about hydroponic vegetable cultivation, and coupled with the food safety issues that broke out in Taiwan at the time, he believed that non-toxic, pest-free hydroponic agriculture had great development potential and decided to try investing in it.
Although he had a direction for transformation, for Ma Daoxin, who had no agricultural background, entering the hydroponic field took considerable effort. He first searched for information online, then drove to the hydroponic promotion center in Taoyuan every day to learn hydroponic cultivation concepts and techniques; later, through an introduction by relatives and friends, he met Hua Shihao, manager of the Greenhouse System Technology Center at ITRI, opening the opportunity for him to apply the "Full Environmental Control Hydroponic Cultivation System" to grow high-value greenhouse vegetables.
Ma Daoxin said that he initially considered greenhouse systems from many different manufacturers, but ITRI's system, unlike the standardized designs of other manufacturers, can be customized according to user needs, adjusting system details such as the light source shape, luminous intensity, light emission position, special emission spectrum composition, intelligent nutrient solution blending control and automatic monitoring and replenishment of nutrient solution, which led him to decide to adopt ITRI's full environmental control greenhouse system.
A Greenhouse Designed Specifically for Tropical and Subtropical Climates
The history of greenhouse cultivation technology is not short. Since the 1950s, Taiwan has successively introduced greenhouse systems developed in Japan and the Netherlands. However, because Taiwan's climate conditions differ greatly from those of temperate and cold-zone countries such as the Netherlands and Japan, for many years there have been problems such as excessively high operating costs, long equipment payback periods and yields falling short of expected targets, preventing large-scale popularization and industrialization.
Huang Tianfu, director of the Greenhouse System Technology Center at ITRI's Central Branch, said that the greenhouse systems of Japan and the Netherlands are mainly designed for temperate and cold-zone climates, to solve the problems of heat preservation and light enhancement that agriculture faces below 15 degrees; while Taiwan is located in tropical and subtropical zones, with an island-type climate, facing problems of ventilation, cooling and dehumidification caused by high summer temperatures, humid heat and frequent typhoons. Therefore, Taiwan's greenhouse systems urgently need to be tailored to local climate conditions in order to develop greenhouse systems suitable for subtropical climates.
To this end, ITRI integrated core technologies such as optomechatronics, precision environmental control, materials, biotechnology and automation, and cooperated with agricultural industry, academic and research institutions to develop optimized light source systems, advanced three-dimensional cultivation facilities, pathogen detection systems, energy-saving control and automatic monitoring systems, creating a smart greenhouse system suitable for subtropical climates. Over the years, it has helped introduce cultivation of many different types of crops across Taiwan, improving crop yield and quality.
Customized Systems Balancing Productivity and Energy Savings
However, every "customization" process requires multiple adjustments to achieve the most suitable benefits for each case. Hua Shihao gives an example: one of the most important links in hydroponic vegetable cultivation is "light", and ITRI, in order to meet Ma Daoxin's needs, repeatedly tried and calibrated. Hua Shihao explained that ITRI's optimized light source technology has, through many experiments, tried spectra of different colors and brightness to find the range most suitable for leafy vegetable growth; but in actual application, adjustments must still be made according to the cultivation conditions at the time, including details such as the light source of specially customized lamps, the spectrum and the light emission shape, and through a secondary optical reflection structure, the light energy is effectively directed onto the plants to achieve the goal of energy savings.
