Smartwell Showcases AI-Driven Strawberry Cultivation with Smart Agriculture Platform

September 3, 2026 — Leads & Copy — Smartwell Technology Corp. (TSXV: SMWE) is showcasing its AI-driven strawberry cultivation solution, demonstrating how its smart agriculture platform integrates crop growth models, environmental sensing, data analytics, and automated greenhouse control systems in real-world controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings.

Strawberries, a high-value crop, are particularly sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, light, irrigation, and pest management. Inconsistent quality and yield, often stemming from traditional cultivation methods and high spoilage rates, present challenges for growers seeking to meet the stringent demands of large buyers like Costco and Sam's Club.

Smartwell's AI-driven precision strawberry cultivation is being offered as a market-ready service segment of its CEA platform. The company selected strawberries due to their high value, stringent standardization requirements, potential for large-scale cultivation, and significant commercial validation value. Projects utilizing this platform have already been deployed across the Asia-Pacific region by Smartwell's China subsidiary, laying the groundwork for application to other crops.

The Smartwell CEA platform operates as an intelligent agricultural framework encompassing sensing, AI models, decision-making, execution, and feedback. It continuously analyzes crop status using sensors, environmental data, imagery, and growth-stage information to guide actions like irrigation, fertilization, and ventilation. This facilitates automated, precision cultivation, aiming to reduce labor, water, and fertilizer inputs while improving product quality and business returns, contributing to resource conservation, environmental performance, and ESG outcomes.

At the core of the platform is an AI model designed as the central decision-making hub for greenhouse cultivation. This model considers 173 influencing factors and over 2,300 dynamic parameters, trained and optimized on more than 76 million crop growth data points and image samples. It enables the system to identify crop growth status and make dynamic decisions and execution recommendations tailored to different growth stages, such as optimizing light, temperature, and nutrients during strawberry fruit ripening for improved sweetness and fullness.

In contrast to traditional agriculture's reliance on manual adjustments and experience-based judgment, Smartwell's approach involves deploying comprehensive monitoring and control equipment, including environmental sensors, high-definition imaging, multispectral capture, ventilation and lighting controls, and automated irrigation and fertilization systems. All equipment is connected to the CEA system, which centrally collects and analyzes data to automatically issue control instructions based on the plants' growth stage.

Following the system's implementation, greenhouse operations have seen a significant shift. Continuous monitoring and automatic adjustments now handle temperature, humidity, lighting, irrigation, and fertilization, replacing repeated manual inspections. Real-time decisions based on environmental data, crop imagery, and growth stages have replaced experience-based judgment for localized corrections. Greenhouse management has become a standardized, visualized, recordable, and traceable process, reducing the need for repetitive manual patrols and fine-grained operational tasks for growers.

Results from strawberry cultivation projects completed over the past three years, including those at Beijing Xingyan Agricultural Cooperative, Beijing Jinhuinong Agricultural Cooperative, and Chongqing Lingli Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., indicate an average effective yield increase of approximately 16.7%. The system also achieved water savings of approximately 53%, fertilizer and pesticide savings of 23% to 28%, and a reduction in labor input of approximately 76%. Overall cultivation returns have improved by more than 26.6%, with an estimated payback period of three to four years. These figures are based on Smartwell's internal calculations and customer follow-up visits, with results potentially varying for other crops.

A general manager at Beijing Jinhuinong Agricultural Cooperative noted a substantial decrease in time spent on manual greenhouse patrols, light adjustments, irrigation, and fertilization. The system has led to more consistent strawberry quality, uniform fruit shape, and easier harvest scheduling. Fluctuations affecting downstream shipping and sales timing are now proactively managed by the system. Profit per greenhouse has increased by approximately CNY 20,000 (roughly CAD 4,000), with the sale price per greenhouse increasing from CAD 15,000 to CAD 17,500 after accounting for savings in input and labor costs.

Smartwell's CTO highlighted that strawberries represent one commercial application within the company's crop model library, with five strawberry cultivation companies served over the past three years. The company focuses on deploying and operating an integrated smart-farming solution that combines crop models, agricultural data, a software platform, and terminal execution in real cultivation settings to enhance customer returns.

Source: Smartwell Technology Corp.