Verdi Retrofit Irrigation Automation Platform

Verdi is a precision irrigation company with offices in Vancouver, Canada and Tulare, USA, co-founded by CEO Arthur Chen and CTO Roman Kozak. It targets specialty crop growers, noting that 95 percent of specialty crop irrigation is still executed and reported manually.

The platform retrofits onto existing irrigation systems in about a day. Wireless, long-range, battery-powered smart valves and pump automation are coordinated by block-level and row-level controllers, a wireless gateway and wireless soil moisture sensors. Growers schedule, run and verify irrigation from a phone or computer, with real-time alerts for leaks and faults, automated reports and sensor-driven or variable-rate irrigation. It serves nuts, vineyards, orchards, berries and research and breeding plots, and integrates with NEC's CropScope platform.

• Smart valves: wireless, long-range, battery-powered valves with remote control and scheduling.
• Pump automation: remote start, stop and scheduling of pumps linked to irrigation sets.
• Block and row controllers: block-level and row-level control, including variable rate irrigation.
• Wireless soil moisture sensors: live root-zone data driving automated irrigation decisions.
• Verification and alerts: real-time confirmation of each irrigation and alerts for leaks or faults.
• Verdi software: phone and web scheduling, automated reporting and bilingual human support.

• Durian and fruit orchards in the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands automating existing drip lines block by block.
• Coffee and pepper estates scheduling pumps and valves remotely during dry-season irrigation.
• Seed and research stations running precise row-level irrigation trials.

• The company reports about 30% water savings and a 10 to 20% yield increase with precision irrigation.
• Labour savings of 250 to 500 USD per acre by removing manual valve and pump operation.
• Retrofits to existing systems in one day, avoiding the cost of replacing infrastructure.
• Growers report cutting weekly irrigation planning from four hours to about 15 minutes.

Labour shortages, drought regulation and rising input costs are pushing orchard and vineyard growers from manual drip operation to affordable, retrofit automation. In Vietnam, durian, coffee, pepper and fruit growers already use drip and sprinkler systems that are still operated by hand, creating a similar opportunity for retrofit valves and sensors.

Verdi Expeditions Inc. has offices in Vancouver (Canada) and Tulare (USA) and reports 5,000+ devices installed. Investors include SVG Ventures and NEC X, which invested in 2024 and integrated Verdi with NEC's CropScope smart farming initiative. Verdi received the WINnovation Award 2024 and raised a CAD 6.5 million seed round in May 2025.