Navita Japanese-melon smart farm uses sensor technology to optimize yields and achieve a high level of melon productivity over 90%
Siriya Traichok, Managing Director of Navita Farm, a grower and seller melon, disclosed that growing the Japanese melon has its uniqueness as the company has been growing this melon for over three decades.
One characteristics of the melon growing here, she said, giving the melons constant attention and care, from selecting the seeds, preparing soil, fertilization and controlling amount of water each plat gets exactly. Smart farm technology has been used for farming management helping the farm optimize their yields and achieve over 90% of farm productivity with the high quality of authentic Japanese taste melon.
The company applied sensor technology to control the melon growing and resource management for the best taste with consistent quality and quantity of melon grown all year round.
“Our purpose of using technology and innovation is not only for saving production cost because the farming operation with productivity planning will certainly be leading to lower cost with higher income owing to increasing yield,” she said.
“Growing the melon, we did not control the production cost, but using our farming knowledge and skills a fundamental understanding the soil condition, water, weather and growing by which technology as supplementary.”
In addition, Navita Farm launched an online platform allowing customers to do pre-order the melon and delivered to their doorstep. Customers can pre-order the melon since the first day the seed is sowed. Popular melon varieties of Navita Farm for local and export market are Green Pearl melon, Orange Rocky melon, Japanese Galia melon and Orange Pearl melon.
Another high-grade melon called Shizuoka, cost 2,000 baht each. Customers need to make a pre-order because this variety can be grown once a year in October and will be able to delivered to customers in January to February.
Navita Farm’s sales dropping due to the Covid-19 because its online Business-to-Business (B2B) customers have been hit by the crisis, those customers are department stores, restaurants, hotels and tourist attraction, while the market of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) is increasing. However, the sales growth and income of online platform is still lower than offline channel, Siriya said the farm needs to make its platform more popular.
