From routine manual scouting to autonomous day-to-day crop monitoring

"Growers have fewer and fewer people available to scout their crops, while early detection of pests and diseases is becoming increasingly important," says Roy Zwinkels. As the son of a grower, he knows these issues by heart. Earlier this year, he joined Fermata as Customer Success Manager for the Netherlands, bringing a new generation's perspective to the greenhouse.

© Fermata

"The generation before me knows how to run a greenhouse, and that experience is hard to beat," Roy says. "What I want to bring is a data-driven approach that builds on it: seeing what is happening in the crop every day, so decisions rest on facts as well as experience and problems are tackled earlier."

The company developed Croptimus™, a digital scouting and agronomic decision support system that uses computer vision to analyze camera images and detect pests and diseases in greenhouses. "Growers can see where problems are occurring in the greenhouse and follow trends and incidents on their computer or phone, so they can intervene much earlier. The decision on how to act remains theirs; we show them where to focus their attention. This saves time and allows them to monitor more hectares themselves."

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For Fermata, Roy's arrival reflects a broader commitment. "Greenhouse horticulture is changing fast, and the whole ecosystem benefits when crop protection decisions rest on objective, daily data: problems are caught earlier, treatments are better timed and less goes to waste," says David Kat, Sales Director at Fermata. "We're committed to helping the sector rethink how greenhouses are monitored and managed. With less and less treatments available to the grower, pressures on labor and yield, it takes people who look at it with fresh eyes. That's why bringing young specialists like Roy on board matters to us. Digital tools also help make a career in horticulture attractive to young people – and the sector needs them."

Right: Roy Zwinkels & David Kat

Analyzing the images"The core of the system is the machine learning software that analyzes the images," Roy explains while demonstrating the platform. "Whiteflies, spider mites, thrips, powdery mildew, mirid bugs," he lists. "The system can detect 20+ different classes of pests, diseases and other crop issues from camera images. This gives you a much more detailed picture than simply walking through the greenhouse." Fermata recently rebuilt the Croptimus platform and relaunched a mobile version, so growers can check detections on their phone while in the greenhouse.

The observations are displayed in graphs and on a map. This allows growers to see where problems occur and how they develop over time. Each detection can be opened as the original image, so growers can verify it themselves.

© FermataThe system provides a daily overview & trends, a heatmap and treatment zones and the effect of each treatment. The detections and incidents are shown on the map and on the 360 vies.

Monitoring treatment effectivenessThe data helps growers target their interventions more precisely and monitor the effectiveness of treatments. By comparing observations before and after treatment, they can gain a better understanding of how a pest population develops.

"You can clearly see the treatment you've applied and assess its effectiveness in that particular area. This also allows you to look at how to optimize your approach," Roy says. "In Canada, we're already hearing success stories from growers who have changed the way they scout. Instead of walking every row, they log in to Croptimus in the morning and go straight to the areas where problems have been detected," he adds.

Loesen Farms in Ruthven, Ontario, is one of them. The tomato grower installed 80 cameras across its entire 6-hectare greenhouse in September 2025. Month after month, Croptimus detections matched what the scouts were finding, and in April 2026 the farm retired its routine manual scouting. "We saw strong alignment between our scouts' observations and Croptimus detections," says grower Kylar Reynolds. "That gave us the confidence to move to autonomous scouting for day-to-day crop monitoring – and so far the results have been very promising."

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In the demanding Dutch market, Fermata already works with several growers and partners and is a technology partner of Tomatoworld, where Croptimus is showcased. At one Dutch tomato grower, for example, a single-camera trial showed spider mite pressure dropping after a spray – and then rising again a few days later, before the grower had noticed anything. A check on site confirmed active mites, and the area was sprayed again that same afternoon. Roy passes feedback from Dutch growers and partners on to the technical teams. "Especially if we can also use the system to provide information about crop status, it opens up a wider range of applications."

Working with robotics and other systemsThe system currently works mainly with cameras mounted at fixed points that pan, tilt and zoom across the crop, but growers, particularly in Dutch vegetable production, are asking for even more images and mobile imaging options. Fermata already has experience of working with Viscon's autonomous scouting robot, which uses Croptimus™ as its detection system. Talks with other drone and robotics companies are ongoing as well.

"That's exactly how we see our role," Roy says. "We're not a robot manufacturer, and we don't want to be one. Our strength lies in our digital scouting and agronomic decision support system: recognizing what is in the images and turning that into valuable information." The company is also exploring partnerships to integrate Croptimus into existing control systems.

"We don't want to be just another dashboard next to the systems growers are already using," Roy says. "Instead, we want to focus on what we do well: detecting pests and diseases. Alongside our own platform, we want to make that information available where growers are already working."

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International expansionBeyond Canada and the Netherlands, Fermata is expanding into other markets, including Greece, and pilots are running in the UK, Thailand and other countries. The technology is not limited to high-tech greenhouses. It can also be used in other growing environments, provided suitable camera images are available. Since 2020, Croptimus has been deployed at 60+ sites in 10+ countries, in crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and ornamentals. In 2025, it won the technology category of the Fruit Logistica Innovation Award.

"The possibilities are very broad, but we also have to be careful not to spread ourselves too thin. We need to focus on where we can deliver the most value to growers," Roy says. Ultimately, the aim is to give growers better information so they can use their time and resources more effectively, combining their experience with daily crop data. "It is about helping growers identify problems earlier and make decisions based on better information," he concludes.

For more information:

FermataDavid Kat

Sales Director

[email protected]

+31 6 51541188

www.fermata.tech