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Revista Ingeniantes 2021 Año 8 No. 1 Vol. 1
ral practices, in this scenario, Arduino is emerging as an It is known that tomato is a warm season plant, where
excellent strategy to construct Hi-Tech and Low cost temperature plays a very important role in the plant de-
robots [12]. velopment. It was observed that at temperatures below
The tomato flower has mechanisms, which have 10 °C, bloom is negatively affected, while temperatures
allowed to achieve up to 98% of self-pollination; howe- higher than 35 °C accompanied by low relative humidity
ver, is not sufficient for fruit production of high quality. It performs certain negative effects on the plant such as
is well known that the size of the fruit depends direct- flower abortion, pollen viability and clusters reduction
ly on the quantity of pollen grains that are deposited [19]. In this study, we established 25 °C as an optimal
on the stigma, thus the smaller quantity of pollen the temperature for tomato pollination, to our knowledge
smaller fruits are produced, with deformed seeds. The we are the first group to propose this temperature as
release of good pollen volumes from the antheric pores optimal one under greenhouse, since there is no a con-
requires external agents, mechanical or biological me- sensus on what the pollination temperature for tomato
chanisms, which by vibration can release the pollen and under greenhouse conditions could be. However, to-
at the time, can modify the physiological conditions of mato under field conditions, is well known that success
the flower. Conversely, Godfray [13], has estimated that rate of effective pollination is influenced by temperatu-
is necessary to grow up the handy man working in agri- re and humidity. Undoubtedly, 22 to 28°C temperature
cultural due to 9 billion people has to be feed in 2049. and 70% to 85% humidity are optimum for good seed
set [10].
Garcia [12], showed that the available robots to work on It is well known that temperature plays a fundamental
field until now are strongly limited. The next generation role during plant development not only necessary for
of robots must be redesigned, extended and optimized. development but also for pollination. Solga [19], co-
Also he underlined the necessities of greenhouse me- rroborated that temperature has a significant effect on
chanization. In this study we tested an automatic tomato flower pollination, is believed to be an outcome of po-
plant pollinator and was compared with manual polli- llen within the anthers. In addition, tomato is a C3 pho-
nation. In order to evaluate whether AP could be more tosynthetic plant, which requires optimum pollination
effective than MP where our results the feasibility to use temperatures ranged from 18 to 27°C [20].
an automatic pollinator and to get more production yield. CONCLUSIONS
On the other hand, Yuan [14], evaluated an autonomous Our robot is still in the proof of concept. It is neces-
pollinator which is capable to pollinate one cluster in 15 sary to improve it; however, the robot could work up to
seconds, that is to say, an average time of 150 seconds 5000 h, without the necessity of any calibration before
per plant. In this study, we are capable to pollinate the or during the season. The results showed that 25 °C is
complete greenhouse in that time. an excellent temperature for supplementary pollination.
Another study was carried out using either insect or an Furthermore, during the first 150 days the pollination with
automatic bee coated with ionic liquid gels [15], current- the robot was higher than the traditional pollination (90
ly, is the most technological approach in the area of au- vs 75% for AP and PM). More tomatoes and clusters per
tomatic pollination; however, a specialized handy man plant were developed using the AP with a total of 963
is needed either to program the robot or synthetize the (48.2 ± 14.6) tomatoes versus 714 (35.7 ± 16.7) (p <0.05)
molecules, which represents an extra expense during and 130 (6.5 ± 1.6) vs. 108 (5.4 ± 1.5) (p <0.05) clusters
the crop harvesting. per plant. The 6 month production costs was 5.4 times
Nowadays in many countries the labor available in agri- cheaper than the PM. The robot could detect tempe-
culture is declining, greenhouses are not the exception rature and humidity during all the study. Therefore, the
automation and robotic are emerging as production kee- operational conditions were established, the robot was
pers to get the costs down. Just a couple of robot could able to perform its activation automatically according to
be called an optimized robot [16], [17]. The AP robot is in the set point parameters. It is mandatory a better instru-
the development of conceptual prototype. It is known mentation with more robust sensors to control several
that is quite complicated to reach the commercializa- processes during the performing of the AP in order to
tion, just a few robots could be considered as feasible get the final stages (Technological product).
to reach it [17], [18] due to their low operating speed, REFERENCES
low success rates and high costs, which gives an extra [1] J. Ollerton, R. Winfree, and S. Tarrant, “How
point to this robot, because the cost of investment (USD many flowering plants are pollinated by animals?,”
$150) is really affordable, the success rate is quite high Oikos, vol. 120, no. 3, pp. 321–326, 2011.
because it pollinated more flowers than manual pollina- [2] J. Jaramillo, V. Rodriguez P, O. Cadavid, M. Za-
tion (Figure 5) and the operation speed is not a limiting pata, and T. Rengifo Martínez, “Buenas Prácticas
factor, even though it only vibrated once or twice a day Agrícolas en la Producción de tomate bajo condi-
is enough to pollinate the most of the flowers. ciones protegidas,” 2007.
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