News » 01.07.2025 - AI-powered scouting flags pests before outbreaks, cuts labor costs

In controlled environments, consistency is king, queen, and the entire court. Whether you're growing tomatoes, cucumbers, or ornametnals, even a single outbreak of pests or pathogens can spell the end of an entire cycle. That's exactly the kind of risk Fermata aims to minimize with its AI-powered crop monitoring tool, Croptimus. "Growers face three major issues," says Valeria Kogan, Product Manager at Fermata. "One is staying ahead of pests and diseases outbreaks. The other is the cost of crop protection, especially if you are relying a lot on your bio program. And the last one is the cost and speed of manual scouting. That's why we have come up with a solution that automates that process with cameras and AI."

At its core, Croptimus is a deceptively simple solution: off-the-shelf security cameras, placed inside a greenhouse and connected via internet. What makes it powerful is indeed the AI model running behind the scenes. Trained on thousands of real-world pest and disease cases, Croptimus continuously scans for issues like aphids, thrips, white flies, mildew and even the ToBRFV, "Which are the most common issues growers face," he points out. "We're not here to replace IPM managers. We're giving them real, objective data to make better decisions."

Saving labor
Scouting is one of the most labor-intensive, and inconsistent, parts of greenhouse growing, according to Valeria. Croptimus automates it with around-the-clock visual monitoring, flagging problems before they become outbreaks. This results in fewer blanket treatments, lower scouting costs, and healthier plants overall.

"Our core crop is tomatoes, that's where we started and where the majority of our customers are right now," Valeria explains. "We've just launched our first cucumber customer, and as always, we've taken the time to ensure the model understands the crop and the grower's priorities as well as they do."

That attention to detail has paid off. At Ridge Farms in Leamington, Ontario – Fermata's first and longest-running Canadian customer – Croptimus helped identify adult whiteflies before anyone saw them and they became a full-blown infestation. "That early detection allowed them to postpone release of beneficials for weeks and control the population just with sticky cards" Valeria says.

It's not just about pests. The system can also detect powdery mildew, viruses, mechanical damage, and is on the roadmap to include crop registration data, offering a way to correlate plant growth with pest pressure and treatment efficacy. "In the future, climate and irrigation data can also be integrated through APIs with platforms like LetsGrow, allowing for a more holistic view of plant health."

Built for scale
Fermata's approach to scaling has been simple: get cameras into greenhouses as early and widely as possible, validate data through continuous grower feedback, and iterate the AI models through strong transfer learning. The more growers use it, the smarter it gets.

"We built the system to be flexible," Valeria says. "It adapts to new pests, new geographies, and new growers. While our core market is currently Canada and we are in the process of scaling up in the Netherlands, and other European countries, we have growers on all continents."

Valeria says they're deep in conversations with growers, exploring future features like crop registration and pollination tracking. But for now, the focus remains on delivering accurate, consistent detection that scales with the size of the operation. "Croptimus helps growers stay one step ahead, not just of pests, but of losses," Valeria concludes.
 

Source: www.floraldaily.com

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