The EPSRC AgriFoRwArdS CDT teamed up with others from The University of Lincoln, including, Lincoln Agri-Robotics and the EPSRC Internet of Food Things to hold a Holiday Hackathon Challenge between Monday 14th and Friday 18th December 2020.

The weeklong hackathon brought together students from all over the UK, and further afield, to work on machine learning challenges to define the Best Poinsettia.

Bridge Farm Group, the leading UK producer of ornamental plants, flowers and herbs has allowed us to visit their state-of-the-art facility in Spalding where they are growing over 1 million poinsettias to collect the images and data required to run this event.

Hackathon participants were given access to our virtual ‘poinsettia nursery’ which combined images of Bridge Farm Groups’ poinsettias with images sent in by the public.

Participants were asked to use state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning (ML) methodologies to develop methods for autonomous labelling of these images. Then use the data supplied in our ‘poinsettia nursery’ to train and test their models to accurately determine the Best Poinsettia.

Hackathon participants worked on 4 challenges;

• Find the colours (balance of red and green)
• Find the bract clusters
• Find the pot
• Find the top of the plant (height above the pot

Entries were submitted in two categories (‘Find the colours’ and ‘Find the bract clusters’), and the winners were announced during the Poinsettia Hackathon Closing Ceremony held on Friday 18th December 2020. During the ceremony one member of the general public was also awarded a prize for submitting the most poinsettia images.

Winners of the ‘Find the colours’ category were;

• 1^st UEA vision lab
• 2^nd JJSnoops

Winners of the ‘Find the bract clusters’ category were;

• 1^st Jack Foster
• 2^nd Shanks

The winners of the Hackathon Challenge will each receive a voucher for a free poinsettia. The member of the public who won the prize for submitting images of their poinsettia also received a voucher for a free poinsettia.

Everyone who sent in poinsettia photographs will receive a voucher for a bag of free bird food, as will the hackathon participants who entered ‘Find the colours’ and ‘Find the bracts’ submissions.

The event will be run again next year and so we would we be delighted for members of the general public to send in pictures of their Poinsettia for use in next year’s competition.

The prize for Best Poinsettia 2021 is to be confirmed.

Thank you to all participants and organisers for a fantastic event.

We would like to wish you all a happy festive period.