Consistency issues limit the sharing of horticultural data across multiple systems, resulting in challenges for users to analyze data effectively across various systems utilizing artificial intelligence technology. Introducing data governance principles can help standardize and unify data practices, making it easier for analysts to locate, comprehend, transfer and integrate data from diverse sources to enable data-driven horticulture. Implementing data governance and principles specific to horticulture can assist in standardizing the layout and format of data structures from different sources. This study aims to propose a new governance framework, Horti-IoT, based on the Data Management Body of Knowledge and several structured frameworks for the Internet of Things (IoT) governance that will lead to data-driven horticulture. This study is empirical in nature. The Dutch horticulture stakeholders are involved in this initiative, providing the data, knowledge, and experiences needed for this study. The data stream from various sources, including camera images, sap flow sensors, climate sensors and manually measured growth data. The key findings following the implementation of the Horti-IoT framework’s principles are reduced workload for data analysts, efficiency in plant monitoring, savings time in pre-processing, enhanced water resource management, reduced system administrator contacts and compliance with General Data Privacy Regulation. The new proposed Horti-IoT framework, compatible with Dutch horticulture, is presented. The data were obtained from the Lab greenhouse at the World Horti Centre in the Netherlands, in the framework of the Regionale SIA RAAK MKB call March 2022-September 2024 subsidy funds for project title ‘Gewasgroei Goed Gemeten (GeGoGe). This project is a collaboration between three educational institutions. Inholland University of Applied Science, the Hague University of Applied Science, Lentiz Vocational School, and stakeholders.
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Background: Revealing tacit knowledge often is seen as very valuable for organizations, although it is usually challenging to enunciate and share this type of knowledge. Methods: This study uses a participatory design and the application of a board gaming simulation as instruments to extract tacit knowledge. To illustrate this application, the gaming simulation is played with entrepreneurs from horticulture. Horticulture represents a complex social system where tacit knowledge plays a major role in the trade process. A participatory design process is used to explore whether the design and play of gaming simulations enable participants to explicate their tacit knowledge. Participants’ participation in designing the gaming simulation explicated that reconstructing reality was a prerequisite for their commitment. Results: The results from playing simulation sessions show that participants were able to: (1) narrow down the anecdotic behaviour to a few factors; (2) to structure these factors; (3) explore how these factors relate to trade barriers and (4) to explain which tactics are applied to foster trade. Conclusion: The educational value of this study is that it helped entrepreneurs in understanding complex real-life situations.
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With the increasing global population, urbanization, the current unsustainable and expansive agricultural practices would be expected to further elevate the risk of food and nutritional insecurity of the global population, which is recognized as a global threat for the 21st century. This paper reviews the demographic changes, urbanization, sustainability of the conventional agricultural systems, the environmental and resource implications and presents possible sustainable alternatives.
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Uit het vooronderzoekvan het project Duurzamelearning communities: Oogstenin de Greenportblijkt dat12 factorenhierbijvan belangrijk zijn. Deze succesfactoren staan centraal in de interactieve tool Seeds of Innovation. Ook komen uit het vooronderzoek, aangevuld met inzichten uit de literatuur en tips om de samenwerking door te ontwikkelen en meer gebruik te maken van de opbrengsten 12 succesfactoren met toelichting, belangrijkste bevindingen en tips voor ‘hoe nu verder’, Poster, Walk through, De app die learning communities helptde samenwerkingnaareenhogerplan te tillenen innovatieveopbrengstenoptimaalte benutten.
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Electrification of transportation, communication, working and living continues worldwide. Televisions, telephones, servers are an important part of everyday life. These loads and most sustainable sources as well, have one thing in common: Direct Current. The Dutch research and educational programme ‘DC – road to its full potential’ studies the impact of feeding these appliances from a DC grid. An improvement in energy efficiency is expected, other benefits are unknown and practical considerations are needed to come to a proper comparison with an AC grid. This paper starts with a brief introduction of the programme and its first stages. These stages encompass firstly the commissioning, selection and implementation of a safe and user friendly testing facility, to compare performance of domestic appliances when powered with AC and DC. Secondly, the relationship between the DC-testing facility and existing modeling and simulation assignments is explained. Thirdly, first results are discussed in a broad sense. An improved energy efficiency of 3% to 5% is already demonstrated for domestic appliances. That opens up questions for the performance of a domestic DC system as a whole. The paper then ends with proposed minor changes in the programme and guidelines for future projects. These changes encompass further studying of domestic appliances for product-development purposes, leaving less means for new and costly high-power testing facilities. Possible gains are 1) material and component savings 2) simpler and cheaper exteriors 3) stable and safe in-house infrastructure 4) whilst combined with local sustainable generation. That is the road ahead. 10.1109/DUE.2014.6827758
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In November 2019, the High Performance Greenhouse project (HiPerGreen) was nominated for the RAAK Award 2019, as one of the best applied research projects in the Netherlands. This paper discusses the challenges faced, lessons learned and critical factors in making the project into a success.
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This study proposes a systematic value chain approach to helping businesses identify and eliminate inefficiencies. The authors have developed a robust framework, which food-sector entrepreneurs can use to increase profitability of an existing business or to create new profitable opportunities. The value chain approach provides win-win opportunities for players within the value chain. To test the robustness of the framework, the authors use food waste as an example of a critical inefficiency and apply it to two different food sector business cases, each operating in diverse conditions. Because the suggested framework addresses the core elements and parameters for the existence and competitiveness of a business, the model can be adapted to other sectors.
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Consumers expect product availability as well as product quality and safety in retail outlets. When designing or re-designing fruit and vegetables supply chain networks one has to take these demands into consideration next to traditional efficiency and responsiveness requirements. In food science literature, much attention has been paid to the development of Time-Temperature Indicators to monitor individually the temperature conditions of food products throughout distribution as well as quality decay models that are able to predict product quality based upon this information. This chapter discusses opportunities to improve the design and management of fruit and vegetables supply chain networks. If product quality in each step of the supply chain can be predicted in advance, good flows can be controlled in a pro-active manner and better chain designs can be established resulting in higher product availability, higher product quality, and less product losses in retail. This chapter works towards a preliminary diagnostic instrument, which can be used to assess supply chain networks on QCL (Quality Controlled Logistics). Findings of two exploratory case studies, one on the tomato chain and one on the mango chain, are presented to illustrate the value of this concept. Results show the opportunities and bottlenecks for quality controlled logistics depend on product—(e.g. variability in quality), process—(e.g. ability to use containers and sort on quality), network- (e.g. current level of cooperation), and market characteristics (e.g. higher prices for better products).
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This study presents an automated method for detecting and measuring the apex head thickness of tomato plants, a critical phenotypic trait associated with plant health, fruit development, and yield forecasting. Due to the apex's sensitivity to physical contact, non-invasive monitoring is essential. This paper addresses the demand for automated, contactless systems among Dutch growers. Our approach integrates deep learning models (YOLO and Faster RCNN) with RGB-D camera imaging to enable accurate, scalable, and non-invasive measurement in greenhouse environments. A dataset of 600 RGB-D images captured in a controlled greenhouse, was fully preprocessed, annotated, and augmented for optimal training. Experimental results show that YOLOv8n achieved superior performance with a precision of 91.2 %, recall of 86.7 %, and an Intersection over Union (IoU) score of 89.4 %. Other models, such as YOLOv9t, YOLOv10n, YOLOv11n, and Faster RCNN, demonstrated lower precision scores of 83.6 %, 74.6 %, 75.4 %, and 78 %, respectively. Their IoU scores were also lower, indicating less reliable detection. This research establishes a robust, real-time method for precision agriculture through automated apex head thickness measurement.
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This article focuses on engagements with elephants in diverse contexts, inquiring why some scholars are indifferent or even actively opposed to discourses that emphasise elephant suffering. In order to address this question, this article will explore three interrelated streams within social science: one that criticises conservation as an elitist, neo-colonial enterprise; one that is preoccupied with the social construction and cultural interpretation of natural phenomenon; and a third sometimes referred to as the new conservation science that focuses on economic valuations of the benefits nature, viewing “nature is a warehouse for human use.” https://doi.org/10.1080/13880292.2016.1204882 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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