Her role at Delphy aligns perfectly with her passion for connecting data, cultivation knowledge, and practical solutions. She describes her multifaceted role as challenging yet fulfilling, "It's difficult because I'm a little bit of everything," illustrating the complexity of translating science into real-world solutions. Delphy has one hectare of research facilities with 90% of them being high-tech greenhouse compartments of different scales, and 10% are indoor farms of different scales for research in a fully controlled environment.
For over a decade, Priva's Horticulture technologies help to control the greenhouse areas. The recently built indoor farm is equipped with Priva's Building Automation technologies, to control the LED lighting and the HVAC-system (humidity, ventilation, air conditioning). It enables Delphy to create the least stressful environment for the crops.
Next to this, vegetable crops (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant) take about 70% of the research and compartments. To a lesser extent, Delphy cultivates strawberries, leafy greens (lettuce, herbs), and ornamental plants (chrysanthemum and pot plants).
Hereafter, Laura discusses Delphy's use of predictive models in autonomous growing. These models enable growers to plan cycles, predict harvests, and maintain optimal conditions. Laura also discusses the challenges in standardizing knowledge exchange in indoor farming and the research efforts towards developing universal protocols.