Management and Control for Quality in Greenhouses

Abstract The development of an open KBS, in the form of tasks and subtasks, provides an elegant way of rapid program development. New rules can be added at any given time and new control scenaria may be implemented by adding new tasks. The approach discusse provides unlimited tasks sequences, based on a well designed set of subtasks and effectively provides a vehicle for immediate exploitation of new research findings or grower’s experience. Fuzzy decisions and fuzzy controllers at the supervisory level, provide adaptive reference generators, which is a real key element in optimal greenhouse control. At the low level the adaptive reference generators make possible the realization of optimality criteria in real time, based on maximizing the “gain” when possible, and minimizing the “expenditure” based on a sequential estimate of plant’s reserves. Specific research targets are the reduction of water and chemicals consumption in both soil and soil-less cultivation, as well as quantification of the effects of nutrients concentration and transpiration rate to product quality.