AI approaches to identification and control of total plant production - for SPA & SFA to environmental control

For the better production of the plant (crop) in the controlled facilities, it is important to control the environment optimally, taking the physiolog ical status into consideration. This has been examined as the speaking plan t approach (SPA) to environment control, based on the identification of the system where the input is supposed as environmental factors (stresses) and the output as plant responses, resulted only in fundamental technology in the laboratory. However, the recent progress in Al makes it probable to app ly the SPA to actual systems. As the total plant production means all proce sses, including the post-harvesting process, SPA may be also applied to the actual storage as SFA (speaking fruit approach), using Al methods. First, we'd like to follow the short history of basic SPA, and then to present the overview of Al methods, and finally to show their effective applications t o the optimal control of total plant production. Copyright (C) 1998 IFAC.