The situation surrounding agriculture in Japan is changing at a level never anticipated before, such as increasing food security risks associated with changes in the global food situation, responses to global environmental issues, and the expansion of overseas markets. Against this background, the vegetable and flower production are also expected to become smarter through using technologies. Since vegetable and flower production require manual crop management and then a lot of labor, the development of smart technology to solve the labor shortages in Japan is a particularly important issue.
Institute of Vegetable and Floriculture Science, NARO aims to improve the competitiveness of the vegetable and flower industry through smart breeding and production technologies. As a smart production technology, we have developed growth and yield simulators based on plant physiology for main greenhouse vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, strawberries) and open field vegetables (cabbage, lettuce, leeks, etc.). These growth simulators are expected to be provided to many growers while expanding the crops and cultivars. We also expect a significant contribution to improving growers' profits and labor efficiency.
In the future, the growth simulators must be integrated with sensing, prediction, and calculation of costs, energy, and CO2 emissions to increase growers' profits and improve energy efficiency. In addition, it will become increasingly important to breed cultivars that respond to reductions in energy and resources, and to change production style such as automated harvesting.
We sincerely appreciate the cooperation and guidance of all concerned in our Institute for the development of the vegetable and flower industry.
Dr.TADAHISA Higashide
Director-General
Institute of Vegetable and Floriculture Science
