High-Tech Winners at GreenTech
GreenTech Amsterdam—the trade show for all things greenhouse technology—has been going on this week, and the GreenTech Innovation Awards were just announced, featuring high-tech solutions for the greenhouse. Here’s the rundown:
GreenTech Innovation Award: Went to Sensie Omni, a wireless plant wearable that translates real-time root, climate and plant signals into an actual growing strategy. One member of the jury noted, “By bringing plant-based sensing from the scientific domain into everyday growing practice, this innovation has the potential to make a new generation of data-driven cultivation accessible to many more growers.” Sensie is based in Belgium. The Innovation Award is for unique high-tech products and technologies with a market presence of no more than one year.
GreenTech Concept Award: A modular AI greenhouse control system called MESH was heralded as a highly scalable solution that could make greenhouse automation more accessible to mid-tech greenhouses. It is from MANNA CEA in the Republic of Korea. The Concept Award goes to an innovation that is not yet on the market but that has the most potential for a successful market introduction within two years.
GreenTech Impact Award: PATS-C impressed the jury for its ability to automatically monitor moth pests, predicting caterpillars’ life cycles and helping growers time interventions and prevent outbreaks. This new award category recognizes products/organizations that have achieved significant real world impact with an existing product, with at least two years of market presence and proven high impact on sustainability and revenue growth.
These may be the winners, but the nine finalists are an interesting collection of innovations, from compostable and slow-release sachets for predatory mites to a new type of lettuce seed, a robot for crop protection, and Blackmore’s Air Tray technology. Check them all out
HERE.
Surviving Drought with Regenerative Farming Practices
Early findings from an analysis of regenerative farming practices are affirming that they can help to protect crop production during drought. Soil Capital is conducting a large-scale European study, pulling data from 1,262 farms in France from 2021-2024.
In a press release, Andrew Voysey, chief impact officer at Soil Capital, said, “For the first time, we are moving beyond anecdote or modeling to show, through large-scale independently verified field data, how regenerative agriculture can help protect production. That begins to move resilience from a high-level concept towards something that can be understood and managed as a financial risk factor.”
The key finding: During a drought in 2023, affected crops fell by 22% on the least regenerative farms compared to only an 8% decline on the more highly regenerative farms. These findings suggest that regenerative ag can reduce the impact of climate stresses on yields.
However, the sliding scale of some operations being more regenerative than others is also the topic of much criticism within the ag community. With no single legal standard or universal certification for regenerative ag, the marketing claims become murky and sometimes misleading.
Soil Capital will be releasing further details on the study in the coming weeks, including insights into metrics for sourcing, pricing and risk management.
2026 Biosolutions Guide Now Available!
Whether you want to look up the efficacy of a certain bioinsecticide or biofungicide, or just brush up on the latest in biosolutions management from some of the industry’s top experts, we’ve got you covered!
The 2026 Biosolutions Guide from
GrowerTalks is out. Find it with your June issue of
GrowerTalks, or head
HERE for a digital copy.
This fourth edition, sponsored by Koppert, has feature articles from Suzanne Wainwright-Evans, Michael Brownbridge, Jeremy Webber, Paul Pilon and other experts. Plus, it contains handy tables on bioinsecticide and biofungicide efficacy. It has something for everyone, whether you are a grower who’s already knee-deep into biologicals or a traditional chemicals user who is bio-curious.
Costa Farms Connects Plants & Wellness with Women Runners
Recently, I wrote about the Plants & Flowers Foundation Holland (PFFH) putting plants in school exam rooms to promote the fact that plants can reduce stress and improve concentration. Well here in the U.S., Florida mega-grower Costa Farms got creative about connecting houseplants with wellness, movement and community by putting their plants in an unexpected place: at the finish line of a race in Minneapolis, in front of an audience that was primed to think about wellness.
The 5,000 women running the PNC Women Run the Cities races (5K, 10K and 10 mile) crossed the finish line to find a pop-up plant experience hosted by Costa Farms featuring its Exotic Angel and Trending Tropicals collections. They gifted more than 1,400 houseplants during the event, thanks to a partnership with Twin Cities in Motion race organization.
“Wellness doesn’t stop at the finish line; it follows you home,” said Mari Carasquillo, vp of marketing for Costa Farms, in a press release. “We believe plants support mental well-being by bringing calm, beauty and joy into everyday life. Partnering with an event that celebrates strong, driven women felt like a natural extension of our mission to make plants accessible to everyone.”
What a perfect audience to receive this kind of message! Those houseplants will hopefully thrive in their new homes for years to come, serving as both a memory of the race and a reminder that the plant is doing important wellness work in the home.
Report from the MT Outpost
After a nearly snowless winter and an incredibly warm early spring season, nature spent the last few weeks messing with us in the form of cold temps and snow flurries. Yesterday it spit snow up here on the mountain for ten minutes, and I keep waking up to temperatures in the 30s. Which is a good excuse for not having the vegetable garden fully planted yet. And it explains why my containers keep spending the night inside.
But friends, perhaps the real reason the gardening isn’t further along is that we added a new member to the pack. Meet Aldo, a spunky little guy with a big heap of curiosity.
Aldo has been bumbling through my flower beds, and every time I pull a weed, he attempts to snatch it away. But while there’s a fair amount of chaos in the puppy realm, I’m also getting to spend a lot of time slowly walking our property with a meandering pup who likes to take his time and investigate every scent.
Until next time,
Jennifer Duffield White
jwhite@ballpublishing.com
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