Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The mushroom growing industry is valued at over $100 billion per annum worldwide according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. All types of mushrooms destined for the fresh market are currently harvested by hand. The labour cost for harvesting mushrooms accounts for more than 30% of the total production cost. The manual harvesting of mushrooms is a labour intensive process and costs this industry millions in revenue losses. In addition to the direct cost of harvesting, the recruitment and retention of skilled workers for manual harvesting of mushrooms is a real challenge as well. On average, it takes about 24 months of training for a worker to become an expert harvester. Recent changes in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in Canada have made the problem even more pressing to the point that mushroom farmers are now struggling to acquire the labour force they need and predict the shortage of harvesters for the foreseeable future. The aim of this research is to develop a robotic harvesting solution that can address the root cause of the labour shortages faced by mushroom industry across the board, contribute to a significant reduction in the mushroom production cost, and increase Canada's global competitiveness in the field of agricultural robotics.