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Mushrooms are the most productive crop in agriculture by floor area, grown indoors every day of the year, and almost entirely picked by hand. That combination makes them both the best target for farm robotics and the hardest one.

Latest results are showing a 7.8% yield increase with Crop Scout at South Mill Champs, measured by the grower: about 1.07 million extra pounds of mushrooms a year. The update explains the figure; the original case study follows.

Bryan Madden, Farms Director at South Mill Champs, on The Robot Industry Podcast: how robotic harvesting and Crop Scout are helping one of North America's largest mushroom farms work with better data.

A commercial mushroom farm has no fields and no growing season. The crop grows indoors, in rooms where a computer controls the climate, and is picked every week of the year.

A mushroom farm runs on two clocks that do not agree. The crop grows through all 24 hours. The people who harvest it work a shift. The gap between those two clocks is one of the quietest and largest losses in the industry.

Almost every commercial mushroom farm is built one of two ways, and which one it is decides what can realistically be automated. It is the first thing worth understanding about this industry, and the thing most outsiders miss.

Suction cups are the obvious way to pick things up with a machine, and they are the wrong way to pick a mushroom. The reason comes down to how a mushroom is attached to the compost, and what happens to it two days later in the cooler.

Machines have been built to pick mushrooms since the 1970s, and almost none of them stayed on a farm. Understanding why they failed explains why the problem is solvable now, and it is not the reason most people assume.

What makes the human hand so difficult to replicate? In a recent episode of the MaRS Solve for X podcast, Mycionics CEO Stefan Glibetic joins Canada's leading robotics experts to discuss the future of dexterous robots, AI-powered automation, and why mushroom harvesting has become one of robotics' most challenging and rewarding applications.

The brochure version of farming's future is a dark, empty building where machines do everything. Stand in a real growing room and that picture falls apart quickly. The useful question is not when robots take the whole job, but which half of it they should take.

From the outside, mushroom farming looks slow and low tech. Inside a growing room it is a race against a clock that never stops. A mushroom gains about 4% of its mass every hour, and that single number decides most of what happens on the farm.

Most growers accept that automation is coming. The hard part is working out what it is actually worth on their own farm. The common mistakes all point the same way: they make the case look worse than it is.

An interview with Ryan McCartney, VP Business Development and Sales at Mycionics, by Niranjan Minase of AgTechNews and AgRoboNews, on what growers should weigh when deciding to automate the harvest.

Mushroom Matter feature on hybrid harvesting: why Mycionics pairs robots with skilled pickers rather than aiming for full automation, and how that works on commercial farms.

Mushroom Matter feature on how Christiaens drawer systems and Mycionics robots were developed together, from field pilots to commercial farms in North America and Europe.

The July 2025 announcement of the industry's first large-scale robotic mushroom harvesting deployment, at South Mill Champs, after a pilot in which one unit harvested a third of the crop on its line with quality above hand picking.

Government of Canada announcement of Innovative Solutions Canada Phase 2 support for five agri-food automation projects, including Mycionics' robotic picking and packing work.

Freshplaza on Christiaens Group and Mycionics presenting a robotic picking and packing solution for the Drawer System at a farm in the Netherlands.

Freshplaza on the start of the Mycionics and Christiaens Group partnership to bring robotic picking to the Christiaens Drawer System, shown at Mushroom Days 2023.

An early Freshplaza profile of the Mycionics robot at an Ontario mushroom farm, showing how it scans the bed and picks to ease the labour shortage.

Freshplaza on Vineland Research and Innovation Centre transferring its robotic mushroom harvesting technology to Mycionics.