Canada provides CAD 894,700 to support SmartGRO's commercial greenhouse intelligent lighting testing

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 8, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced that, through the Research and Innovation category of the Agricultural Clean Technology Program (ACT), it will provide up to CAD 894,673 to SmartGRO Bioengineering to develop and test a new intelligent lighting system for indoor agriculture. The project was launched on February 24, 2026, with agreement number ACT-RI-434, and will run until December 31, 2027.

The commercial-scale trial of the project will be conducted at the Hydragreens Produce greenhouse in Calgary, Alberta. Hydragreens will invest CAD 916,197 and will be responsible for product demonstration and validation in a commercial production environment. The project will test SmartGRO's ultra-fast pulsed LED lighting system, plant sensors, and artificial intelligence control platform, which adjusts lighting output based on plant temperature, health status, and growth data.

Controlled trials previously conducted by SmartGRO showed that, under conditions of equivalent harvested fresh weight, its lighting system can use up to 80% less electricity than mainstream LED products. This project will advance the technology from validation in a controlled environment to operational testing in a commercial greenhouse, continuing to collect data on energy consumption, crop growth, and lighting efficiency.

The project will also carry out iterations of lighting hardware and software, on-site demonstrations with participating growers, energy efficiency data collection and modeling, and machine learning model training. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada disclosed that SmartGRO will also work with the University of Windsor, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, Lambton College, H&A Mastronardi Farms, and Freeman Herbs to jointly participate in technology validation.

In addition to this federal funding, SmartGRO's same technology pathway has received support from Alberta's emissions reduction agency. Emissions Reduction Alberta lists the project as the "Advancing Leading Edge Horticultural Lighting Technology" demonstration project. The project is currently in progress, with the latest publicly disclosed project value at CAD 7.61 million and ERA funding support of CAD 1.94 million. The project implementation sites cover multiple controlled environment agriculture scenarios in Alberta.

SmartGRO has also received support from the Canadian Agri-food Automation and Intelligence Network for the demonstration and validation of the same intelligent horticultural lighting technology. The total value of this portion of the project is CAD 6,409,003, with CAAIN contributing CAD 737,880. The technical solution includes machine vision, hyperspectral imaging, environmental sensors, and machine learning to adjust lighting output and predict harvest scale.

The National Research Council of Canada previously also provided CAD 75,000 to SmartGRO for production process optimization and automation at its Canadian manufacturing facility. The implementation includes automation of key assembly and testing processes, quality control, and construction of a traceability system. The manufacturing optimization project runs from September 2025 to February 2026.

This CAD 894,673 in Agricultural Clean Technology funding corresponds to a new commercial-scale validation phase. The Hydragreens Calgary greenhouse will serve as the core test site, and the project is planned to continue until the end of 2027.