Tokyo, May 08, 2015
Fujitsu Limited and PLANT DATA JAPAN Co., Ltd. today announced that they have reached an agreement to jointly promote business in the area of greenhouse cultivation using ICT to advance agriculture based on a variety of information from plants, including photosynthesis-activation data, as well as leaf size and count.
The two companies seek to contribute to advancing agricultural techniques and maximizing plant production with ICT by managing environmental controls and cultivation in line with the conditions of plant growth, implementing integrated environmental management, and optimizing cultivation management.
Background
Japan's farmers, who are at the forefront of proactively developing and adopting agricultural techniques, have used their tacit knowledge derived from their experience and instincts to get high quality and high yields. The Netherlands, however, which is known for its advanced agricultural sector, has been working to formalize this kind of tacit knowledge in order to control the environments of large-scale, naturally lit greenhouse operations using ICT.
But even in the Netherlands, plant data, which is needed to track plant growth statistics, has been obtained by weekly visual observation or ruler measurement. Real advances in agricultural techniques in any country require a revolution in measuring techniques.
About the Agreement
In 2012, Fujitsu introduced FUJITSU Intelligent Society Solution Akisai Food and Agricultural Cloud, a cloud service for the food and agriculture sectors, and offered Greenhouse Horticulture SaaS, which has features for greenhouse operations, including storing such data as temperature and humidity in the cloud, and controlling devices such as heaters and air-exchange fans.
For its part, PLANT DATA JAPAN, a startup originating from Ehime University, was founded with the goal of developing revolutionary cultivation technologies using plant-measurement methods developed by Ehime University Associate Professor Kotaro Takayama. In 2014, it began offering measurement and analysis technology using plant information, as well as consulting and other services.
With the ability to use plant information in horticulture facilities being so important, the two companies have agreed to combine their respective areas of expertise-Fujitsu ICT and solutions capabilities, and PLANT DATA JAPAN's plant-data measurement and analysis technology-to create integrated environmental controls that systematically combine environmental control and cultivation management.
More specifically, this will not only measure and bring visibility to data about plants currently being grown and environmental information inside and outside greenhouses, it will also, for example, analyze whether temperature settings at certain times are impeding growth, and automatically offer suggestions for improvements as part of an environmental-control system designed to improve crop quality and yield.
Their combined efforts should contribute to more advanced agriculture and improved crop production.
Comment from Takeshi Sudou, Deputy Head of Innovation Business Unit, Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu will combine Akisai with PLANT DATA JAPAN's technologies and know-how to create integrated environmental controls that offer users high add-on-value, contributing to a stronger agriculture sector and a bountiful food future.
Comment from Kazunori Hisaeda, President and Representative Director, PLANT DATA JAPAN
We are moving forward with this project to combine the results of research at Ehime University with the ICT technologies of Fujitsu to offer a completely new system, the likes of which the world has never seen.
Comment from Kotaro Takayama, Executive Technical Advisor, PLANT DATA JAPAN
PLANT DATA JAPAN offers plant-information measurement technology that gives users a tangible feel for growth changes in plants being cultivated. By incorporating ICT technologies of Fujitsu, we aim to provide an integrated environmental-control system using plant information that is both user-friendly (for producers and agricultural consultants) as well as highly sophisticated.
