Case Study: Universidad de Almería boosts greenhouse revenues 15% and cuts cloud deployment time by 90% with MathWorks (MATLAB Production Server)

Universidad de Almería Develops and Deploys Greenhouse Models as a Service to Maximize Crop Production

Universidad de Almería, located in Spain’s largest greenhouse region, faced the challenge of turning complex sets of nonlinear differential equations for climate, irrigation, and crop production into validated, deployable services that could be calibrated with years of greenhouse data and used by farmers and researchers. Rewriting the models in another language would have taken a year or more and risked introducing bugs, so the team turned to MathWorks tools such as MATLAB and MATLAB Production Server to avoid recoding.

Using MathWorks’ MATLAB to develop climate, irrigation, and production models and toolboxes (Control System Toolbox, Model Predictive Control Toolbox, Global Optimization Toolbox) and packaging them with MATLAB Compiler SDK, the team deployed models to the cloud with MATLAB Production Server as web-accessible services (REST/JSON). The MathWorks-based solution cut cloud deployment time by more than 90%, made updates available instantly to users, and materially improved outcomes for growers—crop quality rose by 10% and greenhouse revenues increased by 15%.

Universidad de Almería

José Luis Guzmán Sánchez

Professor