Gardin’s Optics Powered AI Agriculture Platform Increases Greenhouse ROI and Unlocks a $1T Opportunity
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We are pleased to share an interview with Sumanta Talukdar, CEO & Founder at Gardin and Evan Nisselson.
1. What is Gardin’s mission?
Agriculture is the only foundational industry that doesn’t measure its product accurately and at scale. This has kept a $1T digitization opportunity virtually untapped. Gardin’s mission is to unlock this opportunity by enabling food producers, for the first time, to measure the biology of their crops in real-time and effectively at scale.
2. How is Gardin’s optical phenotyping stack differentiated from alternative sensing or analytics solutions in precision agriculture today?
Gardin is the only solution that delivers on 4 critical requirements simultaneously to greenhouse growers. First, our multimodal robotic optical sensors measure crop photosynthesis in real-time and at scale. Second, our Gardin AI brain transforms raw biological signals into clear, actionable insights for growers. Third, the entire platform operates fully autonomously, removing manual data collection and interpretation. Fourth, Gardin is delivered through a scalable SaaS model, aligning our success with our customers’ outcomes.
No other solution brings together automated biological measurement, AI-driven interpretation, full automation, and a scalable software delivery model in a single platform.
3. What are the 2-3 clearest proof points that automated optical phenotyping is becoming a must-have rather than a nice-to-have for leading growers?
Customers are leveraging Gardin's cloud-based crop intelligence system with high-tech optical sensors and seeing amazing results. The clearest proof point is that leading growers rapidly increase their sensor coverage once they experience Gardin’s advanced AI platform value.
From Boer had a 5% yield increase. Leonard Boer says "The sensor data contributes to a homogeneous production of high quality and to cost control. On balance, I estimate that the result per square meter is at least 5% higher."
Delphy Improvement Centre saw a 5x return on investment (10 day payback), using data to reduce waste and improve yield. Stijn Jochems says "Gardin sensors added value in seeing a response before we saw the crop deteriorating. I could definitely see the sensors being used to enhance quality and yield in lit crops, particularly as a way to increase their light use efficiency."
Peelkroon BV prevented light stress and 10% production loss. Rob van Enckevort says "We pay closer attention to the shading strategy now that we work with Gardin, and take better steps to plan for periods of high light, like we have seen this year. Gardin has helped us to think more about the long-term effects of our crop strategy on plant health rather than choosing short term gains."
Additional customers include a leading UK grower and the largest tomato grower in the Netherlands who both tripled their Gardin deployments in less than 10 months. These rapid expansions from industry leaders signal that automated optical phenotyping is now a must have for greenhouse owners to track real-time performance, efficiency, and ROI.
4. What have you learned from your early customers, such as Little Leaf, Glasshouse Farms, Mucci Farms, and Nature Fresh, that has shaped how Gardin is delivering value?
One of our key early learnings was that while our insights are highly valuable, growers are rarely sitting in front of computers, but they are always on their phones, often using WhatsApp. In response, we launched real-time WhatsApp alerts that deliver actionable insights directly to growers, enabling faster decisions in the moment and wherever they are. The feature has been widely adopted and strongly validated by customers.
5. What are three high-value interventions (use cases) customers have made leveraging Gardin data, and what measurable outcomes did those interventions produce?
Our customers typically leverage Gardin to increase ROI via real-time management of water optimization, crop driven growing, and dynamic lighting optimization.
Water Optimization — While trialing a new drought-resistant crop variety, Bayer used Gardin to irrigate only when the plants showed biological need. This resulted in a 25% reduction in water usage while simultaneously increasing yield by 15%, demonstrating how biology-driven irrigation can improve both sustainability and productivity.
Crop-Driven Growing — From Boer, a leading lettuce grower in the Netherlands, used Gardin insights to dynamically adjust irrigation and lighting based on real-time crop feedback. This led to a 5% increase in yield and delivered approximately a 10x return on investment, highlighting the value of data-driven growth strategies.
Dynamic Lighting Optimization — Ljusgårda, a leading leafy-greens producer, leveraged Gardin to continuously adapt lighting to plant physiology rather than static schedules. This resulted in a 34% increase in yield, illustrating the power of real-time biological feedback to unlock significant production gains.
Gardin sensors deployed at Bayer's Brenes Agricultural Innovation Hub in Sevilla, Spain, delivering valuable real-time water optimization analysis.
Gardin sensors deployed at From Boer in the Netherlands. From Boer is recognized as one of the world’s leading growers. Sensors here were used for fertigation optimization and real-time crop optimization.
Example of a targeted intervention by a leading North America grower based on Gardin real-time insights. This single intervention led to an increase of 12 grams per plant. For example, the dotted line in the figure highlights when a leading strawberry grower made a targeted intervention. Gardin immediately detected the resulting productivity improvement, which translated into an increase of approximately 12 grams per plant per week. The ability to quickly validate and optimize decisions is a key driver of customer ROI.
This chart shows a 34% increase in yield purely by optimizing the lighting dynamically based on Gardin insights results at Ljusgårda in Sweden.
6. How do customers quantify ROI when adopting Gardin, and which value drivers matter most to them?
Gardin customers quantify ROI based on time-to-value and improvements in productivity (yield vs input & energy use). The most important value driver is the ability for customers to see, in real-time and at scale, the measurable impact of each Gardin inspired intervention.
7. How do customers pay for Gardin?
Gardin sells an AI software platform as a monthly tiered subscription service that includes the sensor hardware. Customers pay to access the in-depth insights delivered by Gardin’s optics-powered AI agriculture platform.
8. Why does Gardin focus specifically on fluorescence-based measurement of photosynthesis, and where does this approach outperform broader multimodal sensing solutions?
Gardin focuses exclusively on fluorescence sensing because photosynthesis is the primary biological driver of crop productivity. Rather than attempting to solve for everything, we chose to specialize in measuring this one critical signal with the highest precision and at scale.
This focus enables us to deliver confident and reliable insights into plant performance, allowing growers to make faster decisions tied directly to productivity, where broader multimodal approaches often lack signal strength and consistency.
(L-R) Tim Noordijke, who leads customer success for Gardin clients in the Netherlands, shows a grower the real-time impact of one of his interventions.
9. What becomes newly possible when plant physiology can be measured continuously, accurately, and at scale, and who benefits most from that unlock?
When plant physiology can be measured continuously, accurately, and at scale, growers can proactively steer crop performance rather than only react to it. This enables higher yields, lower resource usage, and more consistent crop outcomes.
Active, biology-driven steering also unlocks accurate forecasting of yield and quality over time. This information is valuable not only to growers, but across the fresh-produce value chain, including retailers and food processors, who benefit from improved predictability, planning, and supply consistency.
10. What excites you most about the future of sensing + computer vision + machine learning in agriculture, and why is Gardin uniquely positioned to lead this wave?
Agriculture remains one of the only foundational industries where operational decisions are still driven by intuition and fixed recipes rather than real-time biological data. While this approach worked in more stable climates and markets, increasing volatility is exposing its limits. The path forward is to optimize Agriculture operations using continuous, real-time crop feed back unlocking over $1T in productivity gains purely from existing agricultural systems..
Gardin is uniquely positioned to lead this shift by delivering real-time crop biology insights at scale. This momentum is reflected in strong customer expansion and accelerating adoption across the market, with some customers moving from initial contract to signed annual contracts in as little as 7 days.
11. Who are your investors?
We couldn’t achieve our goals without our investor partners. LDV Capital led our first financing in 2020 along with MMC Ventures, Seedcamp, and angels. Deep-domain agriculture venture capitalist firm Navus Ventures led the recent financing along with new investor Oxford Innovation Finance, as well as existing investors LDV Capital, MMC Ventures, Seedcamp, Alchimia Investments, and angel investors. We look forward to adding additional investor partners as we scale our business and achieve our goals.
Sumanta Talukdar, CEO & Founder, Gardin
11. What is your definition of success?
Business and society is all about people. We have an amazing team and committed investors who are dedicated to achieving our goals and deliver significant value.
“Gardin’s mission is to enable agriculture producers to grow more nutritional food, lower production costs, significantly increase return on investment for its customers and hopefully decrease negative climate impact” says Sumanta Talukdar, CEO & Founder, Gardin.