A strawberry farm automation system out of necessity

Vincenzo Sabato, an Italian strawberry grower who is well aware of the effects of soil salinity, decided to turn to Pan Agri, a company with more than 40 years of experience in irrigation and fertigation and the creator of the Irrifarm system.

"It would be almost impossible to manage these plots of land manually," says Sabato. "Automation has come to my rescue with the remote monitoring of the irrigation and fertigation through a number of sensors. I've been testing the system for about two months on a 1.5-acre strawberry plot, which I previously grew on high-salinity clay. Now, I just use my smartphone to check how the plants grow on the substrate. I can see right away if I am giving them too much or too little water."

Vincenzo Sabato

Sabato can make decisions about when to water and how much to apply from a remote, simple, and convenient location. "Reliability, visibility, control, and management are all within reach. IrriFarm helps strawberry growing on subsoil, improving working conditions and fruit quality."

Bernardo Grieco, director of Pan Agri and creator of Irrifarm: "The case of the Sabato company has been a real challenge for us. It is very satisfying to design solutions for a difficult environment. Some parameters are measured from a monitoring point after watering and feeding, such as the percentage of dehydration, PH, ambient temperature of the greenhouse, humidity, salinity, and temperature of the substrate, as well as the content of different elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The monitoring is on a continuous basis. The application updates the data hourly."

The complete Irrifarm Smartbox

The IrriFarm system is completely built and assembled by Pan Agri at its factory in Scanzano-Jonico, a municipality in the southern Italian province of Matera. "We produce both the hardware and the software; we take care of the assembly of the machines, and we provide the service before and after the installation. Our system has already been chosen by dozens of farms representing thousands of hectares. One of Irrifarm's strengths is the low cost of this new type of crop management," concludes Grieco.