MACQU

(MAnagement and Control for QUality of greenhouse)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

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MACQU is a complete management and control package for greenhouses. It provides the grower and/or researcher with a management application and a research tool. The greenhouse operator can directly apply his experience or he can be assisted in his explorations to better management. Targets for produce quality can be expressed at a very high level of abstraction, and energy saving methods are included at all levels of system operation.

MACQU was developed with EU support and the cooperation of leading European experts. A state of the art description of greenhouse management was enhanced with the results of research focused on the major greenhouse production problems. Solutions are implemented regarding energy saving, humidity and climate control, and nutrient supply for open or closed hydroponic systems with the aim of producing premium products. This development has produced a Computer Integrated Management and Intelligent Control (CIMIC) system, which utilizes modern Information Technologies and incorporates the latest research results of the consortium.

Four key building blocks of a “quality control loop” for greenhouse management operations have been developed and integrated in the overall software structure. Firstly, the conflicting trends of yield loss and quality response to nutrition and accumulation of salts in the root environment have been quantified. Secondly, it has been shown that control of greenhouse humidity can be beneficial, and a humidity control algorithm has been developed that optimizes economical return by weighting the additional cost of control against increases in expected yield and crop value. An algorithm for applying irrigation using a model and the concept of minimum drainage was developed, tested and implemented as the third item. This enables the water supply to be closely matched to the plant's requirement and so the discharge of fertilizers into the soil environment and the consumption of water can be substantially reduced. ISFET sensors for measuring the concentration of individual ions were tested for lifetime durability. Finally, in order to provide the MACQU system with a feed-back block, a method for non-destructive, on-line quality grading has been developed that relates visual (and quantifiable) attributes to accepted internal quality parameters that would otherwise require destructive measurements. In addition, innovative sensors for soil moisture, bio-response (stress symptoms) and the early detection of diseases have been considered. Some of these developments, especially with ISFETS and optical image processing are at the edge of practical use. All well known approaches to energy saving were implemented in a number of ways. On line time integrals of weather variables provide diurnal set-point adaptation while high level rules account for seasonal or development stage effects and quality influences.

MACQU is an OPEN system that can be configured to meet special requirements. The greenhouse computer is visually programmed from the office computer and provides a wealth of intelligent control functions for stand-alone operation. Extended data logging and statistics make the system also a powerful data logger of high precision. Further Intelligence can be rapidly programmed through a Knowledge Based System, native of MACQU. The requirements can be expressed in fuzzy terms (i.e. lower_cost, more_heat etc.) and this enables users’ experience of greenhouse management to be integrated into the control. The system provides a flexible user interface through meaningful standard Win 95 dialogs, including Real_Time graphics and static charts representing historical data. Additionally, an animation capability is offered by attaching graphic objects to background greenhouse pictures or mimic drawings. The system features innovative functions of modern SCADA systems and proves very powerful for environmental monitoring and control as well as for other industrial applications.

The original objective to develop a complete modern Greenhouse management system has reached final product development of two modules: MACQU-C for climate control and MACQU-H for hydroponics in open and closed loop irrigation systems. Development spin-offs, which are at the prototype testing phase, lead to products for Feeding Automation in Fisheries (MACQU-F) and a scalable control network of irrigation management (MACQU-Ir) for green parks, roadside plantations etc.