How Can Gardening Break Through The Circle And How Can AI Penetrate The Industry? This Cross-Border Entrepreneur Who Developed The Huaxin App Said

Develop a flower recognition app and launch a platform for plant enthusiasts.
Why choose to start a business in the gardening field? Dai Li said that plants have healing power, stimulate creativity, and cultivate perception. They are not only the producers of the entire earth but also provide indispensable spiritual value. They are one of the areas where humans are stronger than AI. Therefore, he particularly hopes that gardening can enter thousands of households.

"As an entrepreneur, I hope to do two things in the gardening field. First, help more people recognize plants. As early as 20 years ago, I noticed that many people posted pictures on BBS forums to ask for the names of plants, which was inefficient. So I was determined to use software to meet this need. In 2014, with the rapid popularization of mobile Internet, I led the team to develop a flower recognition app. Up to now, using mobile phones to obtain the names of plants has become a habit for many people. Second, lower the threshold for gardening and let more people fall in love with growing flowers. This is much more difficult than solving deterministic technical problems like flower recognition. We are working hard." Dai Li said.

"The original meaning of 'Huaxin' in Chinese is the most beautiful season, and 'Huaxinfeng' is the wind season that brings the message of blooming. As spring turns to autumn and phenology alternates, the most moving parts can be best appreciated by flower enthusiasts." Dai Li said. Currently, the Huaxin app mainly has three functions: First, popularize plants. It has collected more than 70,000 kinds of plants, and it is co-created with flower enthusiasts, making the plant encyclopedia more interesting. Second, develop and promote material products that lower the threshold for gardening. Huaxin has launched innovative and designed soil improver "Matrix Companion", SUSTEE moisture meter, water-soluble fertilizer, controlled-release fertilizer, breathing pots and other products based on the principle of being few but excellent. Third, promote botanical gardens. Huaxin has established the first botanical garden in Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province where enthusiasts can participate in construction. It combines online and offline scenes to popularize the whole picture of botany in one stop.

"The practitioners in the gardening field are all particularly sentimental and enthusiastic, but there are situations of scattered forces, fighting alone, and 'reinventing the wheel'. Huaxin hopes to use the power of the Internet to polish a pair of flywheels for the industry, so that practitioners can form a joint force, achievements can accumulate, things become easier and easier, and attract more and more people to fall in love with gardening." Dai Li said.

Family gardening urgently needs to break through the circle and find a new blue ocean.
In recent years, Dai Li has realized that in the field of family gardening, the needs of the mass market and the flower enthusiast market are different. Gardening needs to find a new blue ocean and expand the market and production. The breakthrough development of family gardening is divided into two aspects: one is market education, and the other is supply chain upgrading. The two complement each other. Commodities are education. If the supply chain can achieve "good products and easy access", it will be clear at a glance, and what you see is what you get, which will naturally promote mass consumption.

In Dai Li's opinion, the indicators of "good products" in gardening include being finished products, good-looking, matching scenes, easy to understand, high cost-performance, good experience, low maintenance, and a sense of high-end. "'Easy access' is more difficult than 'good products'. Many citizens report that they don't know how to buy potted plant products, and the products purchased online are of uneven quality. Although there are more than 100,000 flower shops in China, there are far fewer garden centers and gardening supply stores. A few pioneers have not yet found a way to achieve sustainable profitability." Dai Li believes that gardening products should strive in the direction of fast-moving consumer goods, fashion, branding, and offline delivery. Only when the industry concentration is increased can leading enterprises have the strength to develop in these directions.

The penetration rate of AI breeding will soon exceed 50%.

Flower recognition software is the application of AI technology in the field of image recognition. As the earliest developer of flower recognition software in China, Dai Li told reporters that flower recognition software uses machine learning algorithms of deep neural networks and is one of the most successful applications of AI technology in the field of image recognition. In addition, he believes that AI breeding is an inevitable trend in the gardening field, and future commercial breeding must rely on the power of computers to improve efficiency.

"Traditional crossbreeding work is a mode of sifting through a large number of options. Assuming there are 1,000 parents available for selection, secondary hybridization is 1 trillion possibilities. In this case, the breeding route depends on the experience and intuition of breeders, and there is a large element of luck. It can be predicted that there will not be too many young people who are willing to engage in traditional breeding work full-time in the future. Traditional breeding will evolve into a low-cost folk breeding behavior that is carried out conveniently." Dai Li said that AI has accumulated rich experience in searching infinite spaces.

"Looking to the future, big data is the fuel, the large model is the engine, synthetic biology is the accelerator, automated production and phenotypic measurement will replace workers, and breeders will be liberated and focus on designing tasks for AI." Dai Li said. To achieve this goal, the core is data entry and the research and development of new models. Once a suitable model is designed, the penetration rate of AI breeding will soon exceed 50%.