Riverview's FloraTrack Wins AI Startup of the Year for Getting Greenhouse Scouting Off Paper

In a commercial greenhouse, someone has to walk the rows, pull the yellow sticky traps and count the bugs stuck to them. At most operations, that count still goes on a clipboard.

FloraTrack AI, a Riverview software company, wants to take it off paper, and an Ontario awards jury just backed the idea. FloraTrack was named AI Startup of the Year at the first AI Catalyst Awards on Oct. 8 in Burlington, Ont., Entrevestor reported.

"Most greenhouse scouting still happens on paper, and the AI that helps growers has to work in the aisle, not just in the office," Daniel Lirette, FloraTrack's CEO and founder, said in a statement.

"Within a greenhouse, you could have millions of plants," Lirette told BurlingtonToday. "Somebody has to be able to track if there are watering issues or temperature problems or where the insect hotspots are, and even identify the bugs caught in sticky traps to make sure nothing is present that shouldn't be."

"We basically give you a virtual assistant to track not just what you're seeing now, but trends and data as well," he said.

Five awards, one startup prize

TechPlace, Burlington's innovation hub, handed out the awards at its 2026 Annual Open House and Innovation Showcase at the Robert Bateman Community Centre. It was the hub's first open house in its new home, with 15 startups on the exhibition floor.

The AI Catalyst Awards had five categories:

• AI Startup of the Year: FloraTrack AI
• AI Transformation Award: AI Materia
• AI Community Impact Award: The Infinite CDO Advisory Ltd.
• AI Student Builder Award: Humanik Technologies Inc.
• AI Catalyst Award: Codalio

Brian Lenahan, Pritam Ambekar and Daniel Thanos judged the entries. TechPlace ran the awards with Innovation Factory, the Burlington Chamber of Commerce and Brock LINC.

FloraTrack was the only New Brunswick company among the winners.

Counting the traps

The core of FloraTrack's software is a photo. A scout snaps a sticky card, and the company's models count 10 insect classes on it, according to its website. Pests such as thrips, whitefly, winged aphids and fungus gnats are counted separately from beneficial insects like Orius and lacewings. Each count is filed against the greenhouse map and the week it came from.

From there, a feature called Dynamic Scouting scores every plant box on severity, trend, time since the last check and recent treatments. The goal, the company says, is a round that "starts at the worst one, not the first one."

A Treatment Builder then ranks biological and chemical options using the last four weeks of scouting and the day's weather. Every spray becomes a numbered record that growers can search for audits.

Hands-free in the aisle

Scouts can wear smart glasses to load a map by voice, follow a guided round and log problems without putting down the crop. BurlingtonToday reported that the system also runs on a mobile app, and that bug counts and species show up on the glasses.

The software is built for greenhouse vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, and for flowers and potted plants grown on benches. It works in English, French and Spanish, and saves scouting data offline until a connection returns.

Lirette leads the company with Maxx Smith, vice-president of operations, and Cameron Knowles, head of customer success, according to FloraTrack's website. The company says it builds its datasets with horticulture colleges and universities, and develops the product alongside growers who use it every week. Its LinkedIn page lists its headquarters in Riverview.

Sources

• Entrevestor — FloraTrack Wins at TechPlace Awards
• TechPlace — TechPlace Celebrates a Milestone 2026 Annual Open House
• BurlingtonToday — TechPlace lauded as city's 'best-kept secret' as local innovation grows
• AI Catalyst Awards
• FloraTrack AI
• FloraTrack AI — About us
• FloraTrack AI on LinkedIn