I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes • Hacker News Board

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#21

Post by davidhunter » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

eutectic wrote: post #14

davidhunter wrote: post #9

We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…

How do you model the crop response to environmental factors? Did you have to run experiments?

Take everything we know from plant sciences as a starting point and then generate additional data through actually growing the crop and measuring impulse/response with sensors.

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#22

Post by davidhunter » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #7

martythemaniak wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered a "startup" in this space before. Take all the equipment, knowhow and enthusiasm of the cannabis industry and apply it to tomatoes. Grow them next to customers, under lights with highly controlled conditions and an obsessive focus on flavour. Guarantee less than 24hrs picked-to-delivered. My research (napkin math) suggested that it would be doable at $8-10/lb, which is certainly high, but probably low…

I think this would work well in places like Norway where electricity and water is cheap and people are used to food being expensive already.

Yep: https://www.hortidaily.com/article/9309162/norway-s-nursery-...

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#23

Post by rackjack » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

0des wrote: post #5

An interesting tidbit about tomatoes, and other nightshades: They contain nicotine! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10552617/

Tomacco?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx1ztJROpyU

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#24

Post by oh_sigh » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

davidhunter wrote: post #9

We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…

Are you optimizing for any experiential aspects of your tomatoes, like taste or texture? Personally, in my area tomatoes are cheap enough to not think about the price, but the products widely available from supermarkets taste like water

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#25

Post by webnrrd2k » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #3

JacobDotVI wrote: post #2

I wonder if they can charge more for the non-cold-chain tomatoes due to better flavor: >Cold storage is widely used to extend shelf-life of agriculture products. For tomato, this handling results in reduced flavor quality. Our work provides major insights into the effects of chilling on consumer liking, the flavor metabolome and transcriptome, as well as DNA methylation status. from: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/…

Yeah, I grew some tomatoes on my balcony this summer, and the way they taste compared to what I would buy at the store you would think they are completely different fruits. I would pay maybe 30% more for a sandwich with fresh tomatoes as opposed to the.... red slime that usually come on them.

Brown tomatoes are showing up in more grocery stores now, and have a much better tomato flavor than beefsteak tomatoes. They are often sold in a sleeve of six or so, or labeled as "kumatos". Really, give them a try - they are much better than regular store tomatoes.

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#26

Post by lathyrus_long » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #15

davidhunter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what we're doing (optimal.ag). Interestingly, the cannabis industry has taken all the equipment, knowhow and enthusiasm of the (Dutch) tomato industry and applied it to cannabis - not the other way around.

First time I flew into Amsterdam it was dusk and I was mesmerized by the seemingly endless fields of greenhouses growing weed. Only years later (after telling everyone about it) did I learn they were actually growing produce :D Dutch tomatoes have a reputation for being bland ("water bombs"), is making more flavourfull ones just product focus? Like picking the right varietal, picking them at the right time, deliverin…

Beyond genetics and environment, soil/nutrient fertility also affects the taste. For example, drought-stressing tomatoes near harvest generally improves flavor at the cost of yield, both by the obvious mechanism of adding less water and by more complicated interactions with the biosynthesis of flavor compounds.

In hydroponics the same improvement is achieved by increasing the nutrient solution concentration (since that's what drought stress looks like to the roots), often literally with salt, NaCl. Growers will typically describe this as raising the solution electrical conductivity, EC, since that's an easily-measured proxy for total dissolved ionic stuff. Hand-held EC meters cost a few dollars, or large systems often run with closed-loop measurement and dosing similar to my

https://github.com/hydromisc/hydromisc

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#27

Post by davidhunter » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #24

davidhunter wrote: post #9

We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…

Are you optimizing for any experiential aspects of your tomatoes, like taste or texture? Personally, in my area tomatoes are cheap enough to not think about the price, but the products widely available from supermarkets taste like water

> Are you optimizing for any experiential aspects of your tomatoes, like taste or texture?

Yes - but this mainly comes down to the varieties that you grow. You can grow varieties that are very tasty and are usually sold in the premium tier. And you can grow high-yielding tomatoes with less taste.

>Personally, in my area tomatoes are cheap enough to not think about the price, but the products widely available from supermarkets taste like water

Where are you based? High-tech greenhouses already supply a lot of premium-tier produce in Europe but there is an undersupply in the US/Asia.

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#28

Post by opinion-is-bad » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

Interesting, but not that dissimilar to the United States. I grow a couple thousand acres of tomatoes in California, all of which are for processing into juices and pastes. These tomatoes are all transported in open-topped trailers by semi, and the losses have always bothered me. There is a tight turn just after leaving our property and the pile of tomatoes there grows steadily with the season as they roll off the top of the trailers. There isn’t much option for us though, and those losses are taken by the processing company.

Interesting fact about tomatoes: if you grow tomatoes for multiple years on the same field your yields will drop to zero due to fusarium fungus destroying the crop. We rotate one year tomatoes with one strand of alfalfa, which lasts 3-5 years and regenerates nitrogen into the soil.

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#29

Post by opinion-is-bad » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

davidhunter wrote: post #9

We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…

How many square meters will that facility be, and what is the cost to construct? At $100M I don’t see how it would be financially viable.

50k kg a day is approximately 600 acres of tomatoes with our yields. That much land in CA might sell for $6-30M depending on water rights and latitude.

Re: I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes

#30

Post by atombender » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #13

0des wrote: post #5

An interesting tidbit about tomatoes, and other nightshades: They contain nicotine! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10552617/

Nightshades are also inflammatory for some autoimmune conditions.

Supposedly because they contain glycoalkaloids. I'm not sure who invented the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP), but it seems to have the same scientifically questionable origins as Leaky Gut Syndrome. I have yet to see any scientific evidence supporting AIP.

There's one study hypothesizing that glycoalkaloids can increase/aggravate intestinal permeability (which is a real thing), but this study only looked at mice [1]. The hypothesis has not been rigorously tested in any serious clinical study on humans.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12479649/