NDSU hosts third annual CEA Conference

North Dakota State University hosted the third annual North Dakota Controlled Environment Agriculture conference on September 17-18, with a focus on precision agriculture in CEA.

CEA is one of the projects funded under NDSU’s Food, Energy and Water Security initiative, with Xinhua Jia, NDSU professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, leading that research. CEA utilizes technology to enable growers to manipulate a crop’s growing environment to achieve desired conditions. Examples include greenhouses, high tunnels, indoor farming, vertical farming, aquaculture and hydroponics.

The event started with guided tours of NDSU’s greenhouse and CEA facilities, and of Applied Digital’s Data Center near Harwood. Included was a tour of Jia’s CEA work at NDSU at the Jack Dalrymple Agricultural Research Complex.

Jia organized the CEA Conference, and 80 people attended.

“I was very pleased with this year’s North Dakota CEA Conference,” Jia said. “We brought together researchers, growers, industry professionals, tribal members and graduate and undergraduate students to share ideas and learn from each other. I believe new technologies can help make CEA more efficient, productive, and sustainable. It was especially exciting to see so many students involved and so many good conversations and new connections throughout the conference.”

Keynote speakers for the two-day event included Joe Munyaneza, United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service National Program Leader for Specialty Crops, who talked about that organization’s CEA research program with a focus on vertical indoor farming; James Altland, USDA-ARS research leader out of Wooster, Ohio, who talked about the research the USDA Application Research Unit and how it is solving some of the difficult CEA challenges; and Neil Mattson, professor and greenhouse extension specialist from Cornell University, was the keynote speaker on Friday morning talking about precision climate management strategies for energy-saving CEA crop production.

There was a poster showcase on September 17 with 24 students presenting from NDSU, the University of Minnesota, South Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota-Crookston.

Friday kicked off with remarks from NDSU interim vice president for research and creative activity Heidi Grunwald and NDAES associate director Frank Casey. Two morning sessions featured NDSU and SDSU faculty and USDA-ARS researchers presenting on issues ranging from hydroponics to high tunnels to imaging sensors to precision irrigation.

Jia concluded the event with a presentation on integrating data centers and CEA to support sustainable FEWS systems in North Dakota.