Smartwell's AI-driven platform boosts strawberry cultivation in Asia-Pacific

September 3, 2026 - Vancouver, B.C. - Smartwell Technology Corp. (TSXV: SMWE) has showcased its advanced AI-driven strawberry cultivation solution through the commercial deployment of its smart agriculture platform. This real-world application integrates AI crop growth models, environmental sensing technology, data analytics, and automated greenhouse control systems.

Strawberries, known for their high added value and stringent cultivation standards, face numerous challenges such as sensitivity to temperature, humidity, light, irrigation, nutrition, and pest management. Major retailers like Costco and Sam’s Club demand consistent quality and yield, but traditional cultivation methods often result in high spoilage rates, affecting market timing and growers’ overall returns.

Smartwell’s AI-driven platform is now being actively deployed across the Asia-Pacific region, with the company’s China subsidiary serving as a real-world foundation for broader applications. The platform, designed to meet the demanding requirements of controlled environment agriculture (CEA), uses a sophisticated framework combining sensing, AI models, decision-making, execution, and feedback. It continuously analyzes crop status through sensors, environmental data, crop imagery, and growth-stage information, guiding irrigation, fertilization, ventilation, supplemental lighting, and other cultivation actions.

At the core of this system is the AI optimal crop growth model, which incorporates over 173 influencing factors and more than 2,300 dynamic parameters, trained on more than 76 million data points. This model not only identifies crop growth status but also makes dynamic decisions and execution recommendations for different growth stages. For strawberries, the model focuses on the coordinated control of light, temperature, and nutrients during fruit ripening to produce fuller, sweeter fruit.

Smartwell’s approach on the strawberry project involved deploying environmental monitoring equipment, high-definition imaging equipment, multispectral capture equipment, ventilation control equipment, lighting control equipment, automated irrigation equipment, and precision fertilization equipment within the greenhouse. These components were connected to the CEA system, enabling centralized data collection and analysis, and automated control instructions based on the strawberry plants’ growth stage.

Following the system’s implementation, greenhouse operations saw significant improvements. Temperature, humidity, lighting, irrigation, and fertilization management that previously required repeated manual inspections are now continuously monitored and automatically adjusted by the system. Experience-based judgments for localized corrections are now replaced by real-time decisions based on environmental data, crop imagery, and growth stage. Manual, item-by-item operations have been transformed into a visualized, recordable, and traceable standardized process.

The results of this deployment have been impressive. Follow-up assessments of Smartwell’s completed projects over the past three years indicate an average effective yield increase of 16.7%, water savings of 53%, fertilizer and pesticide savings of 23% to 28%, and a reduction in labor input of 76%. Overall cultivation returns have improved by more than 26.6%, with a payback period of approximately 3 to 4 years.

General Manager of Beijing Jinhuinong Agricultural Cooperative shared, "Since we connected to the Smartwell system, we've seen a noticeable reduction in manual inspections, light adjustments, and irrigation tasks. Strawberry quality has become more consistent, and our planning for harvest scheduling has become easier. Our profit per greenhouse has increased by about CAD 4,000, and a greenhouse that used to sell for CAD 15,000 can now sell for CAD 17,500, after accounting for savings in water, electricity, fertilizer, and labor costs."

Smartwell’s platform serves as more than just a collection of environmental monitoring systems; it is a comprehensive smart-farming solution that combines crop models, agricultural data, software platforms, and terminal execution. The company reports that over the past three years, it has served five companies growing strawberries, helping them increase their returns through continuous deployment and operation in real-world cultivation settings.

This commercial deployment marks a significant step forward in the application of AI-driven precision agriculture, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize the strawberry cultivation industry and set new standards for efficiency and sustainability.