Latvia's forests cover 3.435 million hectares, or 53% of the national territory, and produce around 11 million m³ of wood annually, below the natural growth rate. Seedling production, which takes between 1.5 and 2 years, is considered a critical step in forest regeneration. A new monitoring system under development is intended to support precision forestry by introducing automation into nursery operations, contributing to the sector's long-term productivity and sustainability targets.
This new technology is under development in Latvia, aimed at automating the monitoring of tree seedling growth, health, and weed presence within greenhouses. Project No. 23-00-A01612-000002 focuses on designing and developing hardware and software for sensor data collection, processing, and integration with a GIS system.
© Riga Technical University
The project, led by Riga Technical University, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, and several industry partners, seeks to digitize and automate tree nursery operations, currently managed manually in ~1000 m² greenhouses. Existing practices include manual documentation of irrigation, fertilization, pest control, and weeding. The absence of spatial reference systems and real-time data collection has prompted the need for a solution that enables efficient data analysis and decision-making.
The main outputs will include a sensor hardware package with air rails, a sensor data processing and analysis software system, and a greenhouse seedling graphical information dataset. These components will be integrated with existing greenhouse irrigation systems and a GIS platform to support planning and operational workflows.
Key objectives of the project include reduced consumption of water, fertilizers, and nutrients; optimization of labor input; and improved recovery rate of planting material. The development also aligns with Latvia's forest sector strategy to increase the value-added per forestry job and to boost wood product output to end consumers by a factor of 12 by 2030.
The project is structured into four phases:
Phase 1: Coordination among partners and procurement of necessary hardware and services.
Phase 2: Design and development of the visual sensor positioning hardware.
Phase 3: Development of the data processing and analysis software.
Phase 4: Integration of the hardware and software components, greenhouse irrigation systems, and GIS system, followed by performance testing.
Project partners include Riga Forests Ltd., Zemnieku saimniecība "Pasakas", NGO Mežvidi Agricultural Technology Park, and Energouzraugs Ltd. The project is supported by the European Union.
