The limited availability of high-quality potato seed remains a challenge to agricultural productivity in the majority of Latin American and South Asian countries. Specifically in Peru, certified seed is utilized in less than 0.3% of total cultivation and constitutes a significant share of production costs. Aeroponic cultivation systems offer an efficient alternative for seed production; however, conventional control strategies often regulate temperature and humidity independently, leading to poor coordination and reduced microclimatic stability. This paper presents the design and implementation of a coordinated multivariable control system for air temperature and relative humidity in an aeroponic chamber for high-quality potato seed production. A Multivariable Coordinated Linear Quadratic Integral (MCLQI) controller is proposed, and its performance is compared with four benchmark strategies: decoupled proportional–integral, decoupled linear–quadratic–integral, decoupled fuzzy logic, and decoupled coordinated fuzzy logic controllers. MATLAB-based simulations were used to model the system, design the controller, and evaluate performance, and the results were then validated on a physical aeroponic chamber prototype. Comparative results demonstrate that the proposed MCLQI controller consistently outperforms the benchmark strategies in terms of tracking accuracy and disturbance rejection, achieving the lowest values of the Integral of Absolute Error, Integral of Squared Error, Integral of Time-weighted Absolute Error, and Integral of Time-weighted Squared Error across the evaluated scenarios. Experimental validation yielded mean steady-state errors of ± 2.5% for temperature and ± 3% for relative humidity. These results confirm that coordinated multivariable control significantly enhances microclimatic stability while maintaining efficient resource use, providing a robust and practical solution for aeroponic seed potato production.
Sanchez et al. (Sun,) studied this question.