Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
TotalGrow Launches New Mult-HI Light Fixtures
The team of lighting experts at TotalGrow are pleased to announce the launch of the new TotalGrow Mult-HI fixture line. These high intensity, multi-bar light fixtures from 170-640W at up to 2.7 µmol/J provide exceptional growing power, quality and uniformity with excellent affordability and ease of implementation, all at only 2” thick.
Various options allow Mult-HIs to provide ideal solutions for any vertically-confined, high intensity growing situation. These include:
· 170W, 240W, 320W and 640W lights styles with 3-8 light bars and 18-43” widths for PPFDs up to 1000+ µmol/m2/s.
· Direct-connecting daisy-chaining for remarkably clean and simple large installations, or built-in power cords for smaller setups.
· Standard or High Efficacy versions of almost any light spectrum to precisely match growth and business goals, or the very versatile Venntis Full Grow Spectrum for almost any crop.
Built-in power supplies inside of the lights further simplify installations and reduce spacial needs. Perhaps most helpful of all is individualized, patient horticultural lighting expert attention to make sure lighting opportunities and challenges are well understood and the optimum light plan is provided for grows of any size and type.
TotalGrow HI-Top Updated for Improved Costs
In addition to the launch of the Mult-HI lights, TotalGrow has released a new generation of High Intensity Top-Lights (HI-Tops). When the thin, wide form factor of the Mult-HI is not needed, such as in greenhouses or larger-spaced warehouse grows, the newest generation of HI-Top generates an ideal light spectrum for diverse supplemental and sole source applications with a versatile output pattern, exceptional efficiency and profound total value in a pleasant work environment. This plug-and-play solution is simple to implement, low on upfront and ongoing costs and makes it possible to sustainably grow high quality plants year-round over a very long lifetime.
· 330 or 530W of power at up to 2.6 µmol/J for the light intensities your plants need
· Robust, reliable and streamlined design for simple utilization
· Full spectrum for exceptional versatility
Spectrum Customization Available
With over 7 years of research, development and diverse experience in the horticultural lighting market refining these designs and informing application recommendations, the TotalGrow team is well equipped to provide custom lighting plans for any lighting need. Contact info@venntis.com with your project goals to explore how you can shorten growth cycles, improve yields and quality, reliably produce year-round and drastically reduce energy costs.
For more information:
Jeff Mastin – Biologist
315.373.9716
jeffm@venntis.com
totalgrowlight.com
"Vertical Farming Is A Viable Solution For Urban Environments"
Ali Ahmadian, Heliospectra
Heliospectra CEO Ali Ahmadian will join AVF at Urban Future Global Conference to provide a keynote speech on May 22. AVF’s Head of Science and Education Ramin Ebrahimnejad sat down with Mr. Ahmadian to learn more about the company and their vision for the future of lighting control in vertical farming.
What are the key factors to operating a successful vertical farm?
I think the two key factors for creating a successful and profitable vertical farm are 1) the choice of crop and 2) the choice of technology.
Today, vertical farms have proven success with a wide variety of herbs, lettuce or leafy greens and berries as these crops respond well in compact production areas with artificial lighting. And it is exciting to see many of these operations as well as research organisations like NASA and DLR’s EDEN ISS push the envelope with successful cultivation of even more vegetables and seed varieties. Vertical farmers know well that the only constant is change and we see vertical farming operations rapidly diversifying the types of crops they are taking to retail markets.
Choosing proven technologies that deliver reliable control and crop performance is essential. Growers and vertical farmers need to recognise that lighting controls and environmental controls, or the lack thereof, impact businesses’ ability to deliver consistent, highest quality produce to market, harvest after harvest. Predictable, repeatable production cycles and consistent crop results rely on a solid control system to ensure predictable and stable revenue streams for the business.
How important are associations like AVF for growing the industry?
AVF and other partner associations are important because they provide standardised guidelines, best practices and collaboration opportunities for established growers and, also for new businesses who may be interested in starting up a vertical farm. AVF represents and advocates on behalf of a huge community of professionals and experts. The knowledge that this community shares with each other ensures the future and the success of the vertical farming and horticulture industries. And most importantly AVF helps businesses and the supply companies like Heliospectra attract new scientists, product developers and technologists who will create the new growing environments, cultivation methods and innovations for future generations.
Can you evaluate the importance of UFGC in regard to connecting vertical farming with decision makers?
The Urban Future Growing Conference is an opportunity to demonstrate the difference that vertical farming and indoor farming applications are making in communities across the globe. We need to show urban planners and city planners that vertical farming is a viable solution for urban environments and that it will provide significant contributions and fresh, sustainably grown and nutritious food supplies back to local communities. My expectation is that we as an industry and as business decision makers can partner with AVF and other UFGC participants to create a new mindset or type of thinking. We share a vision that local communities will benefit from better quality crops and produce, that businesses and vertical farms will create local jobs, that industry will collaborate with universities to create more educational opportunities and vocational training programs, and that we as a society can reduce carbon footprint worldwide while securing our future food supply.
Read the full interview here.
Publication date: 5/20/2019
KropTek Announces Angel Capital Raise of £3 Million
At the recent opening ceremony of KropTek’s new production facility in Shenzhen (China), Wissam Farah, Director and Managing Partner announced KropTek’s capital raise milestone.
KropTek Ltd, one of the UK’s leading LED grow light and grow system providers, has successfully completed its £3 million angel investment round. “The initial target set in Q4 2018 was £2 million. KropTek’s growing activity during the past 6 months allowed the company to adjust the business plan projections and increase the capital raise to meet significant investor appetite at this early stage,” shared Wissam.
The investment included high net worth private angel investors from 13 different countries, highlighting KropTek’s global appeal. The equity raise is eligible for the UK Enterprise Investment Scheme, an HMRC tax incentive for private equity investment in early stage for companies.
On the 4th April 2019, the company held a prestigious Inauguration Ceremony in Shenzhen (China) for its new LED grow light production facility, attended by clients and investors visiting from around the world. KropTek currently supplies LED grow lighting and container farming systems to major clients in North America, Canada, UK, Europe, and Asia.
KropTek’s high-spec container farms, offer a unique environment for the growing of quality plant material in any global location and are proving successful with a number of plant and fruit growers in the UK and Europe. KropTek is developing its container farm range and investing in greater production capabilities to meet the exponentially growing demand in this sector, as well as providing turnkey systems for indoor farms.
“With KropTek’s leading technology, I believe in the business strategy and mission of the company. Over the next few years, indoor farming is going to release enormous market growth in the economy. KropTek’s LED Grow Lights and Container Farm solution has the opportunity to bring more affordable, cleaner and safer food to millions of people around the world”, added Jim Cowles, Non-Executive Director, designate.
To fulfil its global ambitions KropTek’s management team will use the new investment to actively pursue an aggressive growth strategy to meet consumer demand.
"By Water-Cooling Our LEDs, We Reduce Heat And Air Conditioning Load"
Cannabis growing facilities are known to generate a great amount of heat which, if not monitored and controlled properly, could result in issues that require a real big effort and a substantial amount of money to fix. One of the components of cannabis greenhouses that create a lot of heat is the lighting system. "The industry is seeing a shift from HPS to LED lights, as the former, although cheap in terms of initial cost produces too much heat, (over 4000 BTU per hour for the most powerful fixtures) forcing growers to resort to expensive HVAC solutions. While LEDs also produce heat, due to their increased efficiency level, they generate on average of 25% less heat than a comparable HPS fixture," Troy Robson with Agnetix points out.
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is a growing trend that uses technology-based approach toward plant and food production. This includes cannabis indoor and greenhouse grows. Resorting to these kinds of solutions greatly facilitates the management of a cannabis growing facility, but there are things to take into consideration and issues to solve nonetheless.
“The greatest problem that growers have is that current HPS lighting systems require you to purchase 3 watts of cooling for every 1 watt of lighting. This business model requires growers to buy an enormous amount of air conditioning solely for the purpose of controlling the environment they are putting the lights in,” Troy Robson with Agnetix points out. Agnetix is a company that produces an advanced technology horticultural lighting platform that incorporates LED lights equipped with a water-cooling system that precisely addresses the issue that Troy pointed out. Troy not only works for Agnetix, but he also has a long background as a cannabis grower. “The first problem many greenhouses face is a lack of power. Traditionally, greenhouses have been used to grow incremental crops throughout the year. Increased need for more food and more crops has made the implementation of supplemental lights a standard, rather than a luxury or an extra,” he explains.
Water-cooling system solves energy problems
Agnetix designed its water-cooling system, which not only helps growers control the climate in a more efficient manner, but also solve additional business problems, according to Troy. “By water-cooling our lights, we are able to reduce the heat in the room and the air conditioning load required by 50%. Additionally, by providing a far greater amount of usable full spectrum light for the plants, harvest times can be shortened,” he continues.
Two products that Agnetix offers to growers are the A3 single density light and A3DD (double density). Troy noted: “These solutions can be used for indoor grows and greenhouse facilities. The A3DD has double the number of LEDs than the A3 and light output is increased by about 50%. These can be used to cover a 10’ by 10’ area, whereas the A3 single density covers a 6’ by 6’ area.” Troy remarks: “We can typically use 25-30% fewer fixtures than HPS to provide more light to the same amount of area at the same time reducing the grower’s cost and electricity needs."
The challenges to implement a lighting system
Implementing a lighting system can be a real challenge for growers who, according to Troy, tend to underestimate the amount of light they will require. “People misjudge the amount of light that they actually need to run their facility throughout the year.”
He continues, “Usually, growers struggle to have enough daily light intensity in their facility to grow their plants properly during the winter months. Growers assume they can get enough sun, but the reality is that you don’t, as there can be cloudy days, or storms, that inevitably alter the amount of light getting into the growing facility.”
Troy also pointed out that the Agnetix lighting solution can solve additional business problems through the use of the water-cooling system. “For instance, you are producing a large tank of hot water every day from the lights and that hot water can be used for other applications within the facility such as supplementing the hydronic heating system that a lot of these facilities use during winter times or creating hot water to use in the washing areas.”
In summary, cannabis growers have several challenges as they try to optimize their yields. "The truly unique Agnetix water-cooled system offers growers assurance and more profit per plant by delivering a highly efficient energy-saving solution," Troy concludes.
For more information:
Agnetix
agnetix.com
Publication date: 5/1/2019
Author: Andrea Di Pastena
© MMJDaily.com
Growing The Future: High-Tech Farmers Are Using LED Lights In Ways That Seem To Border On Science Fiction
Mike Zelkind, chief executive of 80 Acres Farms, grows tomatoes and other produce with artificial-light recipes made possible with new LED technology. (Maddie McGarvey for The Washington Post)
By Adrian Higgins Nov. 6, 2018
Mike Zelkind stands at one end of what was once a shipping container and opens the door to the future.
Thousands of young collard greens are growing vigorously under a glow of pink-purple lamps in a scene that seems to have come from a sci-fi movie, or at least a NASA experiment. But Zelkind is at the helm of an earthbound enterprise. He is chief executive of 80 Acres Farms, with a plant factory in an uptown Cincinnati neighborhood where warehouses sit cheek by jowl with detached houses.
Since plants emerged on Earth, they have relied on the light of the sun to feed and grow through the process of photosynthesis.
But Zelkind is part of a radical shift in agriculture — decades in the making — in which plants can be grown commercially without a single sunbeam. A number of technological advances have made this possible, but none more so than innovations in LED lighting.
“What is sunlight from a plant’s perspective?” Zelkind asks. “It’s a bunch of photons.”
Diode lights, which work by passing a current between semiconductors, have come a long way since they showed up in calculator displays in the 1970s. Compared with other forms of electrical illumination, light-emitting diodes use less energy, give off little heat and can be manipulated to optimize plant growth.
In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life.
“People haven’t begun to think about the real impact of what we are doing,” says Zelkind, who is using light recipes to grow, for example, two types of basil from the same plant: sweeter ones for the grocery store and more piquant versions for chefs.
For Zelkind, a former food company executive, his indoor farm and its leading-edge lighting change not just the way plants are grown but also the entire convoluted system of food production, pricing and distribution in the United States.
High-tech plant factories are sprouting across the United States and around the world. Entrepreneurs are drawn to the idea of disrupting the status quo, confronting climate change and playing with a suite of high-tech systems, not least the LED lights. Indoor farming, in sum, is cool.
It has its critics, however, who see it as an agricultural sideshow unlikely to fulfill promises of feeding a growing urbanized population.
Grower David Litvin picks tomatoes at 80 Acres Farms in Cincinnati. The vines grow in a high-tech environment that includes LED lamps with customized light recipes. The plant factory produces 200,000 pounds of leafy greens, vine crops, herbs and microgreens annually in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post)
Zelkind agrees that some of the expectations are unrealistic, but he offers an energetic pitch: He says his stacked shelves of crops are fresh, raised without pesticides and consumed locally within a day or two of harvest. They require a fraction of the land, water and fertilizers of greens raised in conventional agriculture. He doesn’t need varieties bred for disease resistance over flavor or plants genetically modified to handle the stresses of the field. And his harvest isn’t shipped across the country in refrigerated trucks from farms vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
“We think climate change is making it much more difficult for a lot of farms around the country, around the world,” he says, speaking from his office overlooking a demonstration kitchen for visiting chefs and others.
In addition to shaping the plants, LEDs allow speedy, year-round crop cycles. This permits Zelkind and his team of growers and technicians to produce 200,000 pounds of leafy greens, vine crops, herbs and microgreens annually in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse, an amount that would require 80 acres of farmland (hence the company’s name).
Zelkind says he can grow spinach, for example, in a quarter of the time it takes in a field and half the time in a greenhouse. Growing year-round, no matter the weather outside, he can produce 15 or more crops a year. “Then multiply that by the number of levels and you can see the productivity,” he said.
Zelkind and his business partner, 80 Acres President Tisha Livingston, acquired the abandoned warehouse, added two shipping containers and converted the interior into several growing zones with sophisticated environmental systems that constantly monitor and regulate temperature, humidity, air flow, carbon dioxide levels and crop health. Grown hydroponically, the plant roots are bathed in nutrient-rich water. The moisture and unused nutrients exhaled by the plants are recycled.
But it is the LED lighting that has changed the game. Conventional greenhouses have relied on high-pressure sodium lamps to supplement sunlight, but HPS lights can be ill-suited to solar-free farms because they consume far more power to produce the same light levels. They also throw off too much heat to place near young greens or another favored factory farm crop, microgreens. Greenhouses, still the bulk of enclosed environment agriculture, are moving to a combination of HPS and LED lighting for supplemental lighting, though analysts see a time when they are lit by LEDs alone.
In the past three years, Zelkind says, LED lighting costs have halved, and their efficacy, or light energy, has more than doubled.
Production in the Cincinnati location began in December 2016. In September, the company broke ground on the first phase of a major expansion 30 miles away in Hamilton, Ohio, that will eventually have three fully automated indoor farms totaling 150,000 square feet and a fourth for 30,000 square feet of vine crops in a converted factory. (The company also has indoor growing operations in Alabama, North Carolina and Arkansas, which acted as proving grounds for the technology.)
“We feel the time is right for us to make the leap because the lighting efficiency is there,” Livingston says.
Grower Julie Flickner inspects kale at 80 Acres Farms. Growing year-round, no matter the weather outside, the vertical farm can produce 15 or more crops annually. The produce is sold in Cincinnati-area grocery stores and restaurants. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post)
The visible spectrum is measured in minuscule wavelengths, shifting at one end from violet-blue light through green to red at the other. For decades, scientists have known that photosynthesis is optimized within the red band, but plants also need blue lightwaves to prevent stretching and enhance leaf color. A barely visible range beyond red, known as far red, promotes larger leaves, branching and flowering. With advances in LED technology, light recipes — determining the number of hours illuminated, the intensity of photons directed at plants and the mix of colors — can be finely tuned to each crop and even to each stage in a crop’s life.
Given the evolving nature of the technology and its enormous commercial potential, light manufacturers and universities, often in collaboration, are actively involved in research and development.
“We have a completely new era of research,” says Leo Marcelis, a horticulture professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Tweaking light recipes has allowed researchers to manipulate crops in a way never seen before. In the lab, chrysanthemums have been forced into bloom without the traditional practice of curtailing their daily exposure to daylight. This will allow growers to produce bigger plants in flower.
“It’s to do with playing around with the blue light at the right moment of the day,” Marcelis says. “Its internal clock is affected differently, so it doesn’t completely recognize it’s still day. There are so many amazing responses of the plant to the light.”
Lettuce, for example, likes as much as 18 hours of light per day, but basil prefers brighter light for 15 hours, says Celine Nicole, a researcher for Signify, formerly Philips Lighting. “Every plant has its own preference,” says Nicole, who conducts research at the company’s high-tech campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands. She has already tested 600 types of lettuce.
Although the permutations are still under study, the sun suddenly seems so analog. “The spectrum from sunlight isn’t necessarily the best or most desirable for plants,” says Erik Runkle, a plant scientist at Michigan State University. “I think we can produce a better plant” with LED lights, he says. “The question becomes: Can you do it in a way that is cost-effective considering the cost of plants indoors?”
“People haven’t begun to think about the real impact of what we are doing.”
Mike Zelkind, chief executive of 80 Acres Farms
The answer seems to be yes. LED light shipments to growers worldwide are expected to grow at an annual average rate of 32 percent until 2027, according to a market report by analysts with Navigant Research in Boulder, Colo. Shipments of LED lights will overtake those of legacy lights starting next year, says Krystal Maxwell, who wrote the report with Courtney Marshall.
Most of the growth will be as supplemental lighting in greenhouses, but vertical farms are seen as an alternative production system that will develop alongside greenhouses, not displace them, Marcelis says.
Runkle estimates there are 40 or more vertical farms in the United States, and new ones are opening every year with the help of deep-pocketed investors. In some of the biggest deals, AeroFarms, headquartered in Newark, last year raised a reported $40 million. Plenty, a grower based in South San Francisco, raised $200 million in 2017 for a global network of vertical farms. (One of the backers is a venture capital firm created by Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.)
Zelkind declined to reveal his capital costs, but for start-up entrepreneurs, LED-driven vertical farms can be one of the most lucrative forms of agriculture. “Based on manufacturers and growers I have talked to, that’s where the money is,” Marshall says.
Critics argue that a lot of the hype around indoor farming is unwarranted, saying it won’t fulfill promises of feeding an increasingly urbanized planet and reverse the environmental harm of industrialized agriculture, not least because most staples, such as corn, wheat and rice, cannot be grown viably indoors.
Also, to build enough indoor farms for millions, or billions, of people would be absurdly expensive.
Runkle says vertical farming “shouldn’t be considered as a way to solve most of our world’s food problems.” But it is a viable way of producing consistently high-quality, and high-value, greens and other plants year-round.
Zelkind says what he’s doing may be novel, but it’s just one component of how we feed ourselves in this century. “We shouldn’t overblow what we do. Eventually it’s going to become more important, but vertical farming alone isn’t the cure-all.”
He adds, however, that “there’s no reason today to ship leafy greens from California to Ohio.”
Livingston likens LED-raised food to the advent of smartphones. “Five years from now everyone is going to be living with indoor farming and wonder how we did without it,” she says.
David Litvin, left, inspects vine crops while farm operations tech Devon Brown prepares labels for retail packaging. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post)
Additional credits:
Lettering by Craig Ward for The Washington Post; animation by Sarah Hashemi; photo editing by Annaliese Nurnberg; design and development by Elizabeth Hart.
Valoya To Host The LEDs & Innovators Conference At GreenTech Again
At last year’s GreenTech, Valoya hosted its first educational event titled LEDs & Innovators Conference 2018. The event gathered some of the most prominent names in crop science, vertical farming and medical plants industries as speakers. These include Richard Ballard of the infamous Growing Underground farm in London and Dr. Giovanni Minuto, the director of the esteemed agricultural research institute CeRSAA, from Italy.
Valoya announces the second edition of this event, to be held on June 12th, the second day of this year’s GreenTech. The conference is tailored to industry professionals interested in deepening their knowledge in matters of lighting for crop science, medical plants cultivation and vertical farming fields. Additionally, this is an opportunity to hear first-hand cultivation experiences from experts as well as network with industry peers.
LEDs & Innovators Conference 2019
The Program
10:15 – 11:15 Crop Science and Light
Stefanie Linzer, Biologist, Valoya
High Quality White LED Light for Crop Science Applications
11.15 – 11.30 Break
11:30 – 12:30 Hard Science Talk on Medicinal Cannabis
Dr. Gianpaolo Grassi, Head Researcher, CREA-CI, Italy
How Does the Light Spectrum Affect the Terpene Profile of Cannabis?
12.30 – 13.00 Break
13:00 – 14:30 Vertical Farming Innovators Panel
Mark Korzilius, Co-Founder & CEO, Farmers Cut, Germany
Gus van der Feltz, Chairman, Farm Tech Society
Henry Gordon-Smith, Managing Director, Agritecture
Lars Aikala, CEO, Valoya
From last year’s LEDs & Innovators Conference at GreenTech
The conference is free of charge, however the number of seats is limited. Participants need to register on Valoya’s website after which they will go through a selection process and will be notified if they can participate in the conference.
The sign-up form and more information about the event is available here.
Valoya is also to host a webinar titled Transitioning to White LED Light in Crop Science, What You Need to Know on May 24th at 14.00 CET. The webinar is aimed at researchers trying to understand if and why they should to move ahead to LED technology in the coming future. It will be hosted by Valoya’s Biologist, Ms. Stefanie Linzer who has more than a decade of biology expertise and has helped Valoya develop some of its patented spectra which illuminate the chambers of the world’s largest agricultural companies, research institutes and universities. The attendance is free of charge.
To sign up, please click here.
About Valoya Oy
Valoya is a provider of high end, energy efficient LED grow lights for use in crop science, vertical farming and medical plants cultivation. Valoya LED grow lights have been developed using Valoya's proprietary LED technology and extensive plant photobiology research. Valoya's customer base includes numerous vertical farms, greenhouses and research institutions all over the world (including 8 out of 10 world’s largest agricultural companies).
Additional information:
Valoya Oy, Finland
Tel: +358 10 2350300
Email: sales@valoya.com
Web: www.valoya.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valoyafi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/valoya
![[Going Green 2] How Samsung is Helping To Take Healthy Food From Farm To Table](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57c8695d5016e11e71be1d83/1556172575017-JOO4JU04IDLYDU13K3NE/index.jpg)
[Going Green 2] How Samsung is Helping To Take Healthy Food From Farm To Table
April 25, 2019
As awareness of environmental issues grows, the impacts of the agricultural industry and our own personal food consumption are of increasing public concern. The use of pesticides, herbicides and other resources are falling out of favor and more efficient methods of food production are being explored as we strive to cultivate healthier food. Samsung Electronics is contributing to these efforts, developing technologies that can reduce the environmental impact of growing healthy food.
Horticulture LED Driving the Future of Farming
On the industrial scale, indoor farms are increasing in popularity, since they are better equipped to overcome spatial constraints and extreme climates. In such indoor farms, artificial light plays a crucial role in efficiently managing the rate of plant growth.
Drawing upon its LED technologies developed for other lighting markets, Samsung launched its Horticulture LED lineup in May of last year to provide advanced lighting solutions to indoor farms. LED lighting is more efficient and has a longer lifespan than previously existing artificial lighting solutions. It is also easy to control the light spectrum of LED lighting and LED solutions are becoming a more attractive option for indoor farms.
Samsung’s Horticulture LED Package and module
Different wavelengths of light can affect plants in different ways. For example, wavelengths of 430 to 700 nanometers are required for photosynthesis, a wavelength of 450 nanometers promotes germination, 660 nanometers stimulates growth, and 730 nanometers or more helps plants to bloom and produce fruits. It’s thanks to these properties that red wavelengths (about 600~750 nanometers) and blue wavelengths (about 400~450 nanometers) have been the prevailing trend in indoor farms.
Recent developments have also emphasized the importance of green light with a wavelength of 550 nanometers, with findings that it can penetrate the lower canopy and thus increase the photosynthesis in plants found there. Since this was observed, interaction with a blue wavelength is now actively being studied also.
Based on this research, Samsung released its White LED package last November, with an extensive spectral range, including growth-boosting blue and red wavelengths. Full-spectrum LED lights can increase the nutritional value of plants and deter disease and pests. The bright white light can also create a more pleasant work environment than narrow spectrum alternatives, allowing farmers to monitor growth and inspect for disease with relative ease.
The package is designed to deliver strong reliability, even alongside the use of chemical fertilizers or under hot and humid conditions. The package is also competitive in price when compared to red LED products, helping to reduce the cost of establishing lighting systems in indoor farms.
Samsung raised the photon efficacy level of white LED packages to the highest in the industry, thus reconfirming the company’s leadership in this field. As a result, lighting manufacturers can use 30 percent fewer packages in each luminaire to achieve the same efficacy level as other lighting equipment, ultimately reducing the costs for indoor farms.
Packages can be selected according to the types of plants and the facility’s requirements. Samsung Electronics offers five white LED packages and one white LED module. The company has also designed one blue package and two red packages with a single wavelength.
As Will Chung, a researcher in the company’s Lighting Marketing Group (LED), explained, “Although it’s been less than two years since Samsung Electronics started its horticulture LED business, we’ve already received lots of positive feedback from the market for developing high-quality LED technologies. “We’re committed to developing more innovative products that support convenient food production, and will continue to enhance our offerings with testing, studies, and experts’ advice.”
Grow Your Own
In the homes of the future, it will be possible to grow your own vegetables no matter the climate. Samsung recently showcased Chef Garden at KBIS 2019, an AI farming platform that integrates with the next generation of Family Hub. The smart indoor garden uses seed capsules, allowing people to grow small fruits, vegetables and herbs with only a small part of the plant. Chef Garden controls light, temperature and humidity to optimize plant growth. The system also utilizes fogponics technology, which creates a nutrient fog that delivers water and nutrients directly to the plants so that they can grow without the need for pesticides. With water kept to the minimum required, the inside of Chef Garden always remains clean. Chef Garden can also inform users when plants are ready to harvest and recommend recipes thanks to smart integration with Family Hub.
Fruitful Investments and Research
Samsung is supporting research and development in fields such as basic sciences, materials science and ICT through the Samsung Science and Technology Foundation. Samsung has funded 500 project grants for the Korean scientific community to explore since 2013, amongst which are technology research projects examining vertical farming and the acceleration of plant growth. In addition, it is expected that further discoveries garnered from ICT projects involving AI, IoT and LEDs will foster synergy between Samsung’s technology and industrial farming’s efforts to produce healthy food.
“One of the main objectives of this support project is to consider how technology might solve the environmental and food shortage problems society faces today,” said Doochan Daniel Eum, Head of the Samsung Research & Incubation Center for Future Technology. “It’s our intention to contribute a total of 1.5 trillion Korean Won (approximately 1.3 billion USD) by 2023, investing in technologies that can effect real change for future society.”
Artificial Lighting Solutions Going Green Healthy Food horticulture LED Indoor Farms LED lighting LED Solutions White LED Package
What Is The Impact of LED Grow Lights On Indoor Horticulture Crops?
Posted on 01/29/2019 by David Kuack, HortAmericas.com
Michigan State University researchers are studying the effects of sole source LED grow lights on edible and ornamental crops.
Michigan State University opened its Controlled-Environment Lighting Laboratory (CELL) in 2017. The 400-square-foot vertical farm research facility is being used to study the indoor production of high-value specialty crops, including edibles and ornamentals with LED grow lights.
“The two major crops that we are studying are leafy greens, including red and green leaf lettuce, and floriculture transplants, specifically seedlings,” said horticulture professor Erik Runkle. “We are fairly new to leafy greens. We started performing research with them about three years ago, whereas, we’ve been working with indoor lighting of floriculture plugs since 2011. What has been interesting is to compare and contrast responses among the different crops. Not surprisingly there are a lot more similarities than there are differences.”
The indoor lighting research being conducted in the lighting laboratory is only with LED grow lights. The LED fixtures that are being used were designed by OSRAM. A similar OSRAM LED product is now being marketed as Phytofy.
“The OSRAM fixtures we are using in our studies deliver seven different wavebands and each one can be independently controlled,” Runkle said. “We are using the OSRAM fixture in all of our indoor lighting studies. This fixture features a sophisticated lighting system that enables us to deliver an infinitesimal number of combinations of light intensities and different wavebands.
“Some of studies being conducted could relate to greenhouse production, but more often the research results we learn indoors won’t apply to greenhouses. In greenhouses we are supplementing sunlight. What we have found is the light spectrum has less of an effect in the greenhouse because there is all the background sunlight compared to indoor production. The ability to control these different growth and quality traits is significantly greater with indoor lighting than in a greenhouse.”
Using light to manipulate plant growth
Runkle said working with different crops, the indoor lighting research being conducted is trying to elicit some very different quality traits.
“Seedlings are typically grown economically in greenhouses,” he said. “To produce anything indoors is going to be more expensive. The challenge and the reason that we are looking at ornamentals in indoor production is that there is still a lot of seasonal variability.
“If there is a period of extended cloudiness or period of sunny weather that normally doesn’t occur, these unpredictable weather conditions can result in plants that finish too early or too late. Growing plants indoors takes a lot of those issues out of the picture because the environmental conditions can be completely controlled.”
Runkle said the research with leafy greens will look at the impact light can have on different attributes of the plants.
“With leafy greens, growers are more concerned with consumer preferences for flavor and texture, as well as the yield and the biomass of the plants,” he said. “In part, light can be used to manipulate these different attributes. With floriculture crops, growers are typically trying to produce a small, compact plant, and in some cases trying to develop flower buds early. In other cases, growers are trying to delay flowering.”
Leafy greens research at Michigan State will focus on the impact light can have on different attributes, such as texture and yield.
Photos courtesy of Erik Runkle, Mich. St. Univ.
Runkle said with floriculture crops the focus is on flowering and the growth aspects for compactness.
“A lot of time can be taken out of production through lighting edible and ornamental crops,” he said. “For leafy greens, the production time can be cut in half compared to the field crops. For floriculture crops, production time can be reduced by a week or two depending on the crop.”
Another area of research Runkle is interested in studying is to determine how light interacts with other environmental parameters, especially temperature.
“Right now we are focused on lighting and that is what a lot of my colleagues are doing as well,” he said. “But we also need to consider temperature effects on the growth rate of plants. By manipulating temperature and light we can probably reduce the production time even more than we have been able to achieve.”
The effects of different wavebands
Most of the LED grow light research that has been done with leafy greens has studied the effects of red and blue light.
“We have a fairly good understanding of the interaction between red and blue light and how that affects leafy greens,” Runkle said.
“The two wavebands for which much less information has been collected are green and far red. The most recent work that we have done is to look at both of these wavebands in independent experiments. Far red is a little more predictable and better known. We probably know the least amount about green light. Our group is focusing on some of these lesser used wavebands and trying to evaluate whether there is a fit, a need or a benefit to including them in a lighting fixture vs. sticking with a white light fixture or red/blue fixture.”
Researchers at Michigan State will study the impact of adding far red wavebands to the light spectrum on floriculture crops.
For the floriculture crops Runkle is studying, the focus is on collecting more details on the benefits of adding far red to the light spectrum.
“We know that there are benefits to far red, but how much far red needs to be delivered to get the positive benefits, which would be early flowering without the drawback of growth extension,” he said. “It’s really trying to dial in that waveband, particularly how much far red is needed.
“One of the things that we have learned is that inclusion or addition of far red light accelerates flowering of some long-day plants. What we are trying to determine is in which crops the far red promotion of flowering occurs and how much is needed to accelerate flowering. We’ve also been investigating how far red light interacts with other wavebands, particularly blue light, as well as how it interacts with total light intensity.”
Quantifying different growth responses
One of the studies being done by Runkle’s research team is comparing the effects of different light spectrum wavebands to white light LEDs.
“Some white LED grow lights are relatively inexpensive,” he said. “We want to determine if there is a benefit to the customized spectrums, which would probably make them a more expensive product. Growers could decide whether to purchase fixtures with a fairly unique spectrum and receive their benefits.
“Is it worth the extra cost to get these benefits? We don’t have specific numbers now, but the goal is to be able to quantify different growth responses under different light treatments. Information from our research, as well as from others working in the area, could help growers choose between a general inexpensive LED grow light to produce moderately good plants or spend more on fixtures to produce plants that flower earlier or have some other attributes that are desirable.”
Runkle said some companies are manufacturing customizable fixtures for growers.
“The major downside of these customizable fixtures is that they are often times more expensive than fixtures with a fixed spectrum,” he said. “Then the question for the growers is whether having the ability to tailor or adjust the spectrum worth the added cost. That is a hard question to answer at this point. It’s going to be situational. I’ve seen general fixtures marketed for the lighting of plants. I haven’t seen fixtures marketed yet for specific crop types.”
Optimising The Modern Farm With LED's At Philips Growwise
Posted by Olga Koltsova | April 17, 2019
© Signify
Vertical farming or city farming – the growth of plants indoors stacked in vertical layers – fully depends on the artificial lighting instead of sunlight. Philips Lighting started working on light products for indoor farming in 2010 together with HAS university and eventually created Philips GrowWise – the research centre in Eindhoven that finds optimal LED-light recipes for indoor farming and develops custom-built vertical farms projects.
YIELD, QUALITY AND RELIABILITY OF A VERTICAL FARM
Global Director City Farming in Signify, Roel Janssen, says that vertical farming has three main benefits. The first advantage of city farming is a higher yield of produce from a square meter of the floor space due to the use of multiple layers – this is very useful in the densely populated areas like Mumbai, Tokyo or Singapore, where a square meter of land is quite expensive. “On one square meter, a vertical farm can produce much more than you would have in a normal field. For example, for growing around 20 kg of lettuce on 1 m2 in California farmers use 200 litres of water per kilogram but in GrowWise facility, we harvest 100 kg from 1 m2 with less than 2 l of water per kilogram.” So vertical farming helps to increase the yield per square meter of actual floor space.
One more merit of a vertical farm is the quality of produce, and Roel Janssen emphasises that quality is the main advantage of city farming: “The quality greatly depends on operating the indoor farm in a right way: if you make sure that the hygiene is up to the proper standards, if you automate most of your production and keep close control over the facility, you can improve the nutritional value of the crops.” Researchers of GrowWise have found light recipes to increase vitamin C content in mint and rocket, and to increase the content of volatiles (aromatic components) in basil. The strawberries that are grown in the controlled environment of GrowWise have a higher Brix value – they are sweeter than strawberries from the open field.
Nowadays lettuce is the most popular crop that is grown in vertical farms, and its quality can be improved. Janssen says: “If you have a bagged salad, often there are red varieties in there, such as lollo rosso. This lettuce is red because of the response to the ultraviolet in the spectrum of the sun. Since we grow the red variety without UV, our ‘red’ lettuce stays mostly green. Three days before the harvest we have a specific pre-harvest light recipe that triggers the colouration of the lettuce. We use a different combination of red and blue and change the daylength, which intensifies the production of anthocyanins (important antioxidants) and makes the lettuce red again after only three days of treatment. This is how we can grow the lettuce in the most optimal way, have a high yield and increased nutritional value. When the lettuce is grown outside, the accumulation of anthocyanins is gradual, and the growth is slower.”
Janssen says that the reliability of the growing process belongs to the benefits of indoor farming as well: “If you do everything properly and get no foreign bodies in your produce, you will always have a constant quality and you can have the same produce all year round.” The reliability of farming indoors also means that the growers can be flexible on the market – they can regulate the growth of produce in accordance with the demands of the customers.
© Signify
HOW TO TWEAK A PLANT IN A VERTICAL FARM
Climate, says Janssen, is the most important tool of indoor farming: most of the water captured by the plant is evaporated, the air becomes humid and it is necessary to remove it from the room. “Light, temperature and CO2 are the main drivers of production and yield. For us in GrowWise the main drivers are, obviously, light and light recipes,” says Janssen. Irrigation and fertigation in the water can influence the growth but also can influence nutrient uptake: “If you want to have low-potassium lettuce, at the end of the growth cycle you can stop adding potassium to the water.”
Seed variety is also an instrument of ‘tweaking’ the crops. “The main goal of the seed breeders is to develop varieties that can resist the environment: breeders want to develop crops that can resist bugs, diseases and temperature shifts. For an indoor farmer, the weather is not crucial – it is always springtime in our climate cells, and the temperature is constant. If we do everything with proper hygiene, there are no diseases. Breeders have already developed seed varieties for indoors: for greenhouses and hydroponic systems. The next step would be to develop specific varieties for the vertical farming – to breed and select for the yield, quality or reliability.”
Currently, GrowWise selects from the available seed varieties together with the breeders. “We work with six-seven breeders to make a selection of the best varieties of crops for indoor farming: we carry out the selection trials to see how the plants perform in the environment without daylight. Maybe we can find varieties that meet our needs and are interesting for us – then the breeders will scale up production. Testing the varieties of crops with us helps the breeders because we will give advice to our customers: we know for sure that this variety works well and gives big yields.”
WHAT TO GROW IN A VERTICAL FARM
By far the most cultivated crops in GrowWise facilities are lettuce and basil. “We have tried over 200-300 varieties of lettuce here,” says Roel Janssen. “Our main focus is on leafy greens because all the energy that you put into those plants is paid back when you sell the produce. If you grow, for example, strawberries, you first need to grow the plant for about two months before it starts fruiting.”
On the racks of the climate cells in GrowWise there are also various baby leaves – 6-10 cm high – red sorrel, mustard leaf, mint, rocket. “We have grown strawberries, cucumbers, kohlrabi, broccoli, even melons – all sorts of crops. It was purely experimental – to see what the possibilities are. However, not all of the crops have commercial viability at his point. The ones that we think are the closest to be economically viable are all the leafy greens, then fruits.” GrowWise is planning to start growing raspberries soon. One of the cells is being re-equipped for the high-wire crops: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers. “In about two months we will grow tomatoes here, on the third floor of a building,” says Janssen.
In order to succeed, startups should be able to sell the added value of a vertical farm – the higher nutritional value of the produce
WHY VERTICAL FARMS FAIL
Why do vertical farming startups fail? Roel Janssen says that the outcomes greatly depend on the mindset of a company toward innovation. “In the Netherlands, we have a very open way of innovating, especially in the horticultural industry, so cooperation, communication and transfer of knowledge are the basis of the business. But in the USA, for example, people who set up a vertical farm often plan to create intellectual property, patents and a unique design system all by themselves – so, basically, they try to reinvent the wheel and that makes the whole thing difficult. So, they do a lot of things by themselves and eventually they come to the strategy of open innovation and try to find the best partners in different segments, but it takes time. Most of such companies eventually come to us – when they visit us, look at automation, light, and climate control, they typically end up being our partners as well.” “Philips GrowWise obviously supplies the light solutions for indoor farming but also the knowledge on growing crops in a vertical farm and the knowledge on the design of the indoor farming facilities. We have a global partnership program that includes 40 technical parties – they do the full engineering and implementation of the ideas that we develop with the customers.”
Another reason why indoor farms are not feasible is that some vertical farming startups keep their capex as low as possible in the very beginning of their work: “There are vertical farming startups that install indoor farm racks in a warehouse and then stop caring about hygiene factors, climate and scalability. Lots of them produce some crops, come to the market early without knowing how to scale, they are not consistent in supply and they don’t have a good distribution channel – that is why they fail,” says Janssen. “In order to succeed, startups should be able to sell the added value of a vertical farm – the higher nutritional value of the produce, which is also always clean and has a longer shelf life. If the companies don’t have a reproducible, scalable business model and operational mode, they don’t sell that added value, hence fail – that is what is seen in lots of cases, especially in the USA. If someone puts some containers to grow leafy greens then delivers them on a bike around the city and supply some produce to the market, this is not really scalable and financially feasible.”
Janssen admits that a certain level of professionalism in indoor farming needs to be built, but there is no standard yet – and this is the biggest challenge for the industry. “If you look at the example of greenhouses, there is a standard for all of the constructions of that type – it’s a Dutch Venlo greenhouse. Almost all over the world, you can see greenhouses that are very comparable to it in size and dimensions, so all of the technology is built for those dimensions. Here, in our vertical farming facility, we have done research on at least 20 different substrates and at least on 5 different growing systems, but there is no one winning model yet. People are still developing a standard for vertical farming. And we try to develop it in a very open way – together with our customers in order to be successful.”
THE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL FOOD PROBLEMS?
Roel Janssen says: “If a crop is not in the greenhouse at this point we don’t expect it to be in a vertical farm very soon, because first it is much more convenient to grow something in a greenhouse – you can build greenhouses around the city and then transport the produce.” According to Janssen, most of the food shortage issues nowadays are caused by the logistics problems – grains, potatoes are relatively easy to transport, they are just not always transported to the right regions due to the economic and political reasons. What can be achieved with indoor farming is the possibility of supplying more nutritious local food – and that is what is already being done. Greenhouses can be gradually transformed to produce more nutritious crops than they do to feed the regions with food quality problems. Janssen concludes: “I don’t think indoor farming is the solution to this world’s food shortage problem. Greenhouses combined with indoor farming cannot prevent the global food crisis, but they can play a role in improving the situation.”
Vertical farming also has the potential for the production of functional food: if one has kidney problems and would like to eat lettuce with less potassium, it makes sense to produce this lettuce in an indoor farm. It is more difficult to grow low-potassium lettuce in a greenhouse or in an open field because there the growers have to rely on sunlight, which influences the nutritional content in an uncontrolled way. Indoor farming can also develop its potential for the cultivation of pharmaceutical crops – to influence their nutritional content in a controlled way.
HOW TO BUILD AN INDOOR FARM
The process of creating an indoor farm for GrowWise begins like that: customers look through business cases based on ten years’ experience to have a better understanding of what might meet their requirements. Then the research centre with its partners prepares a model, which helps the customers to assume a cost per kilogram of produce: “We take the growing results that we have achieved in all the project done in GrowWise and in Brightbox (vertical farming expertise centre at the Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo) and also done for our customers to come up with the yield prediction, which is based on a facility of a certain dimensions. We assume certain costs of the investment, and we can come up with the price per kilo of produce. We put it into the business model and if that kind of model works for the customer, we start to discuss the system architecture. We involve our partners who do the detailed engineering: automation, sowing lines, transplanting, germination, growing rooms, climate and irrigation control, CO2 control, spacing, lighting – all of that is considered. Our partners also implement engineering for customers. Typically, the process of creating a vertical farm from the beginning to the implementation takes at least a year. The construction lasts roughly six months and during this time we repeatedly grow the leafy greens to validate the results, so as in three months the customers can have a pretty solid, validated reproducible growth recipe. Then it is necessary to design the facility, make sure that all the partners communicate well, integrate everything, engineer that and implement it. This is how you build a large-scale automated vertical farm.”
“If someone wants to create a small scale research room such as the ones we have here, it’s fairly easy to build – but it can only be useful for a first rough estimation before doing research. If you want to make a vertical farm scalable, automation is the best way to do it.”
PLANT FACTORIES
“In Asia vertical farms are called “plant factories” which may sound as something very artificial for us here, in Europe, but in fact it is quite a good name for an indoor farm facility, because if you run it as a factory, you make sure that everything is controlled, reproducible and scalable – that us what is important if you really want to be successful as an indoor farmer. In Asia consumers view a factory as something well controlled, hence maintaining good quality standards, that is why a “plant factory” term is appealing to the Asian customers. In Europe consumers like the term “indoor farm” more, because “a farm” sounds nicer and warmer than a factory. People prefer to imagine somebody with a beard and dirty hands growing crops because it resembles a farm. By the way, when we introduced bumblebees into our facilities to pollinate the strawberries, everybody loved it and then, all of a sudden, an indoor research facility from artificial and factory-like became nice and cosy.”
Tags: GrowWise, indoor farming, Philips Lighting
Signify Expands In Belgian Horticulture Market With New TOMCO Project
Signify today announced its second horticulture project with tomato grower Luc Coghe to install full LED lighting in a newly built 10 hectares greenhouse in Roeselare, Belgium. Since 2014, Luc Coghe, Owner of TOMCO and his wife, Greet Biesbrouck, have increased yields and improved the quality and taste of high wire tomatoes grown under a combination of Philips GreenPower LED interlighting and high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting at their Biesbrouck Company. Based on this success, they are moving to a full Philips LED lighting system for their newest greenhouse.
The new greenhouse is equipped with a combination of Philips LED toplighting and interlighting that produces a total of 225 µmol/m2/s. LEDs produce little heat so planting can start earlier and therefore the plants can be given more light in the spring and summer. “I expect this system to bring in higher yields and more predictable production for my customers. LEDs should also help us differentiate ourselves in terms of quality and taste, as we have experienced at our Biesbrouck location,” said Coghe. “More importantly, my greenhouse is future proof with full LED.”
“We are seeing a great demand for our Philips GreenPower LED solutions in the Belgian market,” said Udo van Slooten, Business Leader Horticulture at Signify. “Not only has Luc Coghe decided to reinvest in LEDs. Other companies in Belgium that have made that move recently include Den Boschkant and Tomaline with hybrid toplighting combining LED and HPS and Ceulemans. That is because they trust that our Philips products will help them achieve higher yield and a better-quality crop.”
TOMCO is planning to grow the variety Xandor in the new greenhouse. The project is being carried out with Philips LED Horti Partner MAIS AUTOMATISERING NV and the plants are expected to go in in June 2019
How Can Controlled-Environment Growers Improve Energy Efficiency And Grow Light Optimization?
Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium researchers are looking for ways to reduce grow light electricity use and improve light uniformity to maximize controlled-environment crop yields.
April 3, 2019
By David Kuack
Are you using or thinking about using grow lights to produce your controlled environment crops? If so, would you be interested in how to reduce the amount of electricity needed to operate those lights?
Researchers with the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., are studying the use of control algorithms to optimize the light used on controlled-environment crops while reducing the amount of electricity used to operate grow lights.
“These control algorithms that deal with lighting were developed over 20 years ago,” said research associate Dr. Kale Harbick. “Unfortunately, this technology, which was under patent until about four years ago, never achieved large scale commercial use.
“The algorithms are related to delivering a constant amount of light to the plants every day, which is called daily light integral (DLI). Controlled-environment crops like lettuce prefer to receive a constant amount of light every day. This enables the plants to maximize their growth and helps to avoid problems with tipburn, which can make the crops unsalable.”
Even though this technology is off patent, Harbick said some growers are still hesitant to incorporate it into their environmental control systems.
“As part of the GLASE research program we are putting this control technology into two commercial pilot facilities in New York,” he said. “We are going to run multi-year experiments so that the growers in those facilities can compare the performance under our control system with what they are currently using. Incorporating this technology, we are looking to demonstrate a large amount of energy savings for the crop yields produced.
“We’re specifically focused on lettuce, tomato and strawberry. The first two pilot facilities are growing leafy greens, primarily lettuce. Lettuce is the crop the Cornell controlled-environment agriculture group has studied the longest and we understand the best. Tomato and strawberry are newer crops to us so we are doing a lot of greenhouse experiments right now with these plants to analyze the relationship between light, carbon dioxide and growth. We have the information well established for lettuce, but it’s not as well established for fruiting crops. We would eventually like to roll out pilot programs for tomatoes as well. We have some tomato growers in the state who have expressed interest in using the technology.”
GLASE researcher Dr. Kale Harbick is studying the use of control algorithms to optimize light while reducing the amount of electricity used to operate grow lights.
Photos courtesy of Kale Harbick, Cornell Univ.
Harbick said New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is financially supporting GLASE, is interested in trying to meet greenhouse gas emission production targets. CEA has the potential to use a lot of energy. Any energy savings that the GLASE research can realize has a corresponding large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Lack of light uniformity
One of the problems that Harbick often sees with grow lights is growers don’t install enough fixtures.
“The most basic problem is light intensity,” he said. “We often see greenhouses where growers are trying to produce lettuce with grow lights, but they only have installed half the number of fixtures they should have in order to grow lettuce optimally. What that means is even if they ran those lights 24/7 they wouldn’t be able to achieve the DLI needed to reach the target amount.”
Harbick said the issue of not installing enough lights is related to measuring light.
“Trying to measure the light is not a trivial thing to assess,” he said. “If there is an array of lights that are regularly spaced in the same plane, the problem is the light is not uniform on the crop. It kind of has a bullseye effect where there is a lot of light in the center and not very much on the edges. Lighting manufacturers and designers often provide growers with designs that show the light intensity at the center of the space, which is not representative of the light that is received in the rest of the space. The lights might be sized according to that center spot which is just fine, but everything else is undersized. We hear regularly from growers who’ve spent a lot of money on a lighting system and then realize later that it was undersized.”
Harbick has done a lot of work on lighting uniformity to try to address this issue of undersizing.
“We’ve looked at techniques to change the positon of the lights to make it more uniform,” he said. “We’ve looked at changing the brightness of the lights depending on where they are in the space to make the light more uniform. We have a couple of greenhouse spaces at Cornell that have this uniformity optimization. These are the only greenhouses on campus to have uniform lighting.”
One of the common issues encountered by growers who have installed grow lights is the lack of light uniformity which can be caused by undersizing the number of fixtures.
Harbick said this lack of light uniformity is not often noticed because of the way humans see light distribution.
“We could look out at a crop and the lighting looks uniform to our eyes because our eyes are so good at attenuating brightness levels,” he said. We don’t notice these differences very easily. The brightness level differences have to be measured.”
Although the lack of light uniformity can be related to the number of light fixtures installed, Harbick said there could be other factors involved.
“In the research greenhouse that we have optimized light uniformity, initially we received a design from the manufacturer that called for 20 LED fixtures,” he said. “I modified the design using a computer program that I wrote that was able to reduce the number of fixtures to 16, but improved the light uniformity. The light is much more uniform and we were able to do it with fewer fixtures.
“It’s not always a case of installing more fixtures to increase light uniformity. It can also be things like changing the brightness of the fixtures or changing the position of the fixtures. There are other possibilities to improve uniformity besides the number of lights.”
Loss of crop yields
One of the reasons that there continues to be light uniformity issues is how the fixtures are spaced in greenhouses and indoor farms.
“It’s a status quo thing,” Harbick said. “Lights have always been placed in a plane and regularly spaced out. This is how it has always been done. Until recently most grow lights have had a fixed intensity. Under those conditions it is difficult to overcome this light uniformity problem.
“Lack of light uniformity is less of problem in large greenhouses because there is a lot of interior space and not much edge space. However, this is a major problem in indoor farms where there are long rows or shelves. These indoor farms don’t have the background natural light like greenhouses to mitigate some of these effects. I have seen warehouses where they were growing a high DLI crop and the plants in the center of the room were a foot taller than the plants on the edge. It was simply because the plants in the center were receiving more light. In indoor farms, whether it’s lettuce, tomatoes or other high DLI crops, that is where the payoff really comes for optimizing light uniformity. For indoor farms light uniformity is something that people aren’t looking at yet. They just kind of live with it. They just move plants around to try and even out the growth. But that creates a lot of extra labor and logistic issues. They’re not optimizing the total yield of the crops. Every plant on the edges that is shorter than the ones in the center of the room is lost sales.”
GLASE researchers are conducting greenhouse experiments on tomato and strawberry to analyze the relationship between light, carbon dioxide and plant growth.
Harbick said that the issues with light uniformity may improve as changes are made to lighting fixtures.
“As the lights become more capable in terms of adjusting brightness and spectrum, there are opportunities for GLASE researchers to share some of that optimization technology with lighting manufacturers to try to get these improvements out to the industry. But it’s going to take some time. We’re still doing a lot of the research ourselves. We don’t have an active grant in this area right now so this is something that I have been doing on my own. It’s definitely an opportunity for future study.”
For more: Kale Harbick, Cornell University, School of lntegrative Plant Science, Horticulture Section, Ithaca, NY 14853; kh526@cornell.edu.
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
The Effect of Far-Red Enriched Spectra On Lettuce
One of the exciting features of LED grow lights is the ability to customize spectrums of light to fit various plant growth applications. Therefore understanding the relationship between light and plant growth is key for healthy, high-quality crop production.
Plants do not only utilize light for photosynthesis, but different light spectrums can be used to promote different growth responses in plants, at different growth stages.
Researching the effect of far-red
A research study was conducted by Heliospectra’s Plant and Light Experts on the effect of a Far-red enriched spectra on Black-Seeded Simpson. The purpose of the research was to study the effect of Far-red enriched spectrum on lettuce in a sole-source light environment.
The Far-red wavelength peaks around 735 nm, this waveband is not included in Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) which range from 400-700 nm but has been proven to steer growth responses in plants.
The research was conducted in Heliospectra’s plant lab using Heliospectra’s fully adjustable Elixia LED grow light. The lights have the ability to control and monitor provide growers with full control over the composition of the spectrum, intensity, and duration, giving growers the possibility to create their own light strategies.
The lettuce was seeded in 7x7 cm (2.7x2.7 in) pots with a mix of soil substrate and vermiculite. Four days after germination pots containing one plant were placed into a LED growth unit (1.4-m², 15ft² open area) with reflective curtains. The plants were grown under four different spectra, all with the same light intensity (200 mol/m2/s) and spectral composition within PAR (red, blue and white wavelengths), three of the four spectra had additional Far-red added to their spectrum at different intensities (Low, Mid, and High).
The lettuce were grown under LED light for a total of 22 days and the experiment was repeated 3 times.
Clear visual difference
At harvest, 5 pots per treatment were collected and measured. The lettuce head diameter was measured with accuracy of 0.5 cm with a ruler, and fresh weight were taken per plant with a scale (Mettler P1200).
A clear difference could be seen in height and size of the lettuce at harvest depending on the light strategy. With the head diameter and weight increased proportionately to the increase of amount of Far-red used.
These results indicate that far-red added to the spectrum has great impact on the growth of Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce. In a controlled sole-source environment, the spectral quality is of high importance, and gives growers a real potential to steer the visual appearance of the crop grown to fit their production goals.
Click here to download a summary of the test.
For more information:
Heliospectra
Box 5401 SE-402 29 Göteborg Sweden
Phone: +46 31 40 67 10
Fax: +46 31 83 37 82
info@heliospectra.com
www.heliospectra.com
Publication date : 3/15/2019
Philips GreenPower LEDs Help Prime Delica To Grow Healthier And Safer Crops For 7-Eleven Customers In Japan
Prime Delica’s new vertical farm facility in Sagamihara ensures year-round supply of high-quality lettuce, spinach and coriander
Prime Delica conducted research with Tamagawa University, CCS and Signify to determine the optimal light recipe to increase vitamin levels and nutritional value of lettuce
The entire seeding-to-harvest process is automated and can produce up to 3,200 kg of lettuce daily
Signify helps Japanese food supplier Prime Delica to grow high-quality lettuce varieties, spinach and coriander all year round using the Philips GreenPower LED production module range and offer customers of 7-Eleven crops with higher vitamin levels and nutritional value.
Demand for quality
Prime Delica has been a longtime premium delicatessen supplier to 7-Eleven. To meet increasing demand for fresh, healthy and pesticide-free food, Prime Delica built a new large-scale vertical farm in the city of Sagamihara in the Kanagawa prefecture, Japan.
“It’s difficult to get a good quality and stable food supply from the open field due to the effect of climate change on crop growth,” said Mr. Kazuki Furuya, President of 7-Eleven. “We believe the Sagamihara vertical farm is a great step to guarantee safe and healthy food for our customers.”
Backed by research
“We always aim for the best quality crops and want to guarantee customers a stable supply of healthy vegetables,” said Masayoshi Saito, president of Prime Delica. “LED lighting makes it possible to steer the cultivation process by adjusting the color, duration and positioning of the lighting. After years of research with Tamagawa University, CCS and the plant specialists at Signify, we have found our recipe for growth with Philips GreenPower LED production modules, which allow us to fully control the growth cycle of our crops with the right lighting strategy.”
High value crop
Prime Delica uses different light recipes at different growth stages for each of the crops, with a pre-harvest treatment to increase the vitamin C level to meet functional food requirements. Apart from the premium quality, crops coming from their vertical farm also have a much lower bacterial count and are grown using no pesticides, a big advantage for 7-Eleven.
“We do not use any pesticides because our crops grow in a closed environment, which also means there is no air contamination,” explained Mr. Saito. “Our crops can be delivered to 7-Eleven stores within 48 hours from harvest and are very fresh and full of vitamins. The cost price per crop is higher than in the open field. However, the overall costs of processing are vastly reduced in terms of logistics, checking and washing with very little waste. It’s a cost reduction mechanism if we consider the factory in total.”
Increased automation
Prime Delica has automated the entire process from seeding to harvest, minimizing manual operation time and improving the hygiene of the crops. Robots carry out logistical operations. A total lettuce growth cycle (frillice, red leaf and bimittuce varieties) from seeding to harvesting now only takes about 39 days, compared to 70 days in the open field. Production can even reach up to 3,200 kg of lettuce a day.
The new Sagamihara facility started operating in January 2019, and the company is looking to expand further in 2019 and 2020. Prime Delica is considering to grow other crops like strawberries in similar vertical farm facilities in the future.
Spectrum King LED Granted US Patent For Proprietary Plant Spectrum
Spectrum King LED is proud to announce that we have been granted US Patent No. 10238043 for our proven proprietary plant spectrum.
This gives us exclusive rights to the full spectrum technology used in all of our grow lights. The result of over 10 years of detailed research, plant studies and multiple prototypes has brought us to this great day. This new patent reinforces our claim of being the leaders and founders of full spectrum horticultural lighting technology.
Russia: Vertical Farm Upgrades LEDs to Save on Energy
In greenhouses, supplemental lighting is often used, enhancing the sunlight and boosting the natural mechanism of photosynthesis in plants. In iFarm's vertical farms that are assembled in closed units with no access of light or air from the outside, LED lamps are used. They provide the plants with the required light spectrum for growth.
“In the beginning we purchased special lamps with various spectrums, bicolor and full spectrum ones, but we were not happy with their efficiency: they got as hot as radiators but provided little light”, shares the general director of iFarm, Aleksandr Lyskovskiy.
The first vegetables in the company's experimental bio-vegetarium were grown with the usage of such lamps. Further, iFarm began cooperation with a light equipment producer and got an opportunity to use the lamps with the most efficient LED existing at that moment. They showed a good result in terms of crops and energy consumption, requiring twice as little energy as the analogues, but they were rather costly.
iFarm specialists were confident that they could improve those lamps. For that purpose the chief engineer and head of the R&D department of the iFarm Project, Pavel Zeeman, unscrewed every singe lamp ever acquired by the company, browsed through tons of literature and recalled everything that he knew about LED lamps.
Square lamps were used in the vertical farm in the summer of 2018. As a result of their own research, iFarm determined the parameters for improved lighting under the conditions of a vertical farm, one of which is a high humidity level.
According to the chief engineer, iFarm lamps produce white light that includes blue, red, yellow and green spectrums, therefore fully replacing the sunlight. "Bicolor ones, which are often considered the most efficient ones", produce only the red and blue spectrums, which is much less healthy for the plants.
Due to the usage of highly efficient LED lamps, the company has reduced the energy consumption significantly, to 90 Watt per square meter. That allows for the decrease of greenery production cost and therefore makes the technology even more accessible for the franchisees.
Currently, a new big vertical farm is being constructed in a plot owned by the Vega Absolute company. The latter is acting as a technological partner of iFarm in lighting for the new project.
For more information:
iFarm
ifarmproject.ru
Publication date : 3/19/2019
"Vertical Fixture To Make Hop Cultivation More Sustainable"
Light Engine:
You probably won't notice it during Friday drinks, but there has been a shortage in hop for the production of beer. The hop that is normally grown in the open field has faced failed harvests. It is the reason hop growers are slowly switching to conditioned growth.
Climbing plant
Compared to the cultivation of tomatoes or cucumbers, hop cultivation looks rather strange to outsiders. The fast growing climbing plant grows to a height of several meters in a short time, and produces flowers which are used in the conservation of beer. When growing under controlled circumstances, lighting is one of the ways to increase the yield of the plant. And to make the cultivation even more sustainable, vertical lighting could be the solution, according to LED supplier Light Engine. They developed the Cabled vertical fixtures.
Optimal lighting
Ramon de Vrie, Light Engine: "The light is evenly distributed over the plants, reducing shadows. By placing the plants closer together, you can increase the yield. This is particularly important for growers who are reluctant to switch to conditioned cultivation due to the high energy costs. LED lighting is definitely more sustainable than regular lighting, and by placing the fixtures vertically we use the light optimally."
Looking for the ideal light recipe
Now there are various hop companies which have the Cabled hanging vertically in their greenhouse. They can be found in Hong Kong, the US, and Australia. Besides extensive experimenting in practice, Light Engine is looking for partners and laboratories to test which effects the lights have on the quality and productivity.
"We want to elaborate on the light spectra, wattage, and the number of light hours. When we have found the ideal light recipe, we expect that the grower will have a high yield of high quality." And so it can be that in a few years it will be normal to drink a beer from the greenhouse.
For more information
Huizhou Light Engine Limited
T: (86) 752-311 2222
ramonvandevrie@lightengine-tech.com
www.lightengine-tech.com
Publication date : 3/6/2019
Simple DIY Aquaponic System For The Home
Aquaponics is the art of growing plants in a system where fish and plants co-exist.
Mother nature has been doing this for as long as plants and fish have existed, humans
have been doing this since the beginning of farming and cultivation, but only recently
has it been brought back into the light with hydroponics. Gaining in popularity, this
technique has been proven to have many benefits for crops while being very eco-friendly.
So why should you add aquaponics to your hydroponic garden? Fish and plants have been working
together for a very long time, their practically soul mates. Bacteria from plants breaks down
the fish waste and feed, then converts it into plant food and nutrient. Organic matter contained
in fish feces and feed are also used for the conversion of fish generated ammonia to nitrate.
The plants consuming the dissolved waste nutrients filter the water for the fish. While
dedicated bio-filters and settlers can be added as precautionary measures, this system is
very self correcting, taking away the need for chemical usage such as fertilizers. Even PH levels are adjusted correctly assuming the fish tank and hydroponic setup is contaminant free.
Quick overview of the benefits
-No nutrients required
-PH balance is adjusted correctly on its own
-water is filtered on its own and recycled
-no chemical usage such as fertilizers and pesticides
-fish can be harvested as a second food source
-crops have a higher turn-around and higher yield
What you will need
This technique isn't just for large commercial agriculture companies, setups small enough to add in
your kitchen as a centerpiece or on a teachers desk for educational use can be easily created. With
all the benefits already known, why not add it in to any size of a hydroponic setup. If you already have
a hydroponic setup, all you will need to do is add in an aquarium/tank with the proper fish and you have a fully functional aquaponic system
Items required for indoor aquaponics
- Hydroponic system including plant bed, medium and tubes connecting to tank
- Grow light depending on where your hydroponic system is setup
- Aquarium or fish tank
- Water pump
- Power source for pump and grow light
- Ceramisite
- Fish
- Plants
Lets build!
Step 1 - Fill the black bottom tank to the water mark with clean uncontaminated water.
Step 2 - Find the small transparent tube and connect it to the water pump.
Step 3 - Connect the water pump to the transparent fish tank.
Step 4 - Place the buoy through the transparent tank into the black bottom tank.
Step 5 - Place the transparent tank on the black bottom tank then attach the pumps power
box onto the bottom tanks notch.
Step 6 - Attach the isolation plug to the solid tube at the top of the fish tank then fill
the tank with water up to the isolation plug.
Step 7 - Stack the top plant tray in alignment with the mountain tube.
Step 8 - Install the clear syphon tube into the flow adjustment switch.
step 9 - Add in your ceramisite until it fills the tray about an inch thick.
Step 10 - Add in your fish and plants!
What fish should you use?
Deciding on what type of fish you should use entirely depends on your setup. Large scale
with the purpose of farming and sustainability should have larger fish to produce more
waste and to carry the benefit of being able to harvest the fish for food. Small scale,
like the setup we just built will require smaller fish. Small also gives you the option
of choosing fish based on your perception of attractiveness. Decorative fish that can be
used in small setups like this are guppies, fancy goldfish, angelfish and swordfish. Some
people have taken is as far as creating environments for turtles, crayfish and even shrimp.
What plants should you use?
Most plants will thrive in an aquaponic environment, especially those commonly used for
agricultural purposes. Large scale operations will grow all kinds of vegetables such as
lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, spinach or anything grown on a farm. But since this setup is
small and more so decorative, smaller vegetable and herb plants can be used such as basil,
mint, watercress, chives, parsley, lemon grass, oregano, thyme, succulents and many more.
Get started!
Although the idea of aquaponics can be daunting and seem complicated, it's not as big
of a task as it seems. Whether it's for a green solution to growing crops naturally or
a hobby that can double as decoration, everyone can find a reason to jump on the wagon.
As you have read above, with minimal equipment and time, you can create your own little
Eco-system that provides you with food, education and a wonderful conversation starter.
AUTHOR: Luis Rivera has 20+ years of experience in global market expansion, business development, mergers and acquisitions, business re-engineering, finance and investor relations of software companies. He is passionate about technology, spectral science, indoor farming, food production, automation, and more.
Since 2015 he is the president of Advanced LED Lights, a leading LED grow lights manufacturer based in Hiwasse, Arkansas. When not at work, Luis enjoys swimming, yoga, as well as growing grapes and flowers in Sonoma, California.
Six Spectral Channels: Osram Unveils Grow Light System For Horticulture Research
Phytofy RL is already being used by NASA and Michigan State University. Osram is using it to carry out research of growth, anthocyanins and taste, conducted in a climate chamber at the TU Munich.
Osram has developed a research luminaire to meet the growing demands of researchers at universities, private institutes and plant production in greenhouses and vertical farms. Researchers and modern agriculturists can use the LED-based plant luminaire system Phytofy RL in the lab or in climatic chambers in order to develop new plant-specific light and growth recipes. These recipes can lead to desired outcomes in plant quality, yield and flavor.
Each of the six spectral channels can be addressed individually with Phytofy RL and the intensity planned and managed precisely in real time.
Selective intervention
"Various light wavelengths and intensities allow selective intervention in the metabolic processes of agricultural crops and ornamental crops", Claudia Zehnpfennig, Global Product Manager with Osram explains. "Yield, coloration and taste as well as other features can be influenced in this way. The latest research shows that not only is this process impacted by photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) – in the range of 400 to 700 nanometers (nm) – but that shorter and longer wavelengths also influence plant development."
With Phytofy RL, six spectral channels – from a natural far-red end-of-day light to UV light – can be addressed individually and the photosynthetic photo flux density (PPFD) planned and controlled precisely in real time: 385 nm, 450 nm, 521 nm, 660 nm, 730 nm as well as a warm white channel with 2,700 Kelvin. At the same time, the large number of LEDs in the fixture allows a higher photosynthetic photon flux (PPF).
Claudia Zehnpfennig & her colleague Kelcey Trecartin last year on the Cultivate
Light recipes
According to Claudia, the highly uniform light distribution is a special feature of the system. "The calibrated system furthermore supplies a precise irradiance map, calculated by the software with no quantum flux measurements required. Use of Phytofy RL allows for evaluation of the most varied light recipes, without having to change luminaires between individual tests. Diverse combinations of wavelengths also can be programmed, in different light profiles and across the entire photoperiod." In addition, users get five light recipes following registration, which have been specially developed by Osram.
Use of Phytofy RL allows the researchers to evaluate the most varied light recipes, without having to change luminaires between individual tests.
Climate chambers
The system software was developed by Osram together with plant biologists and can be used intuitively via the graphical user interface. Manufacturers of climate chambers benefit too, with integration possible in their systems. "The flat and robust design (667 x 299 x 44 mm, just under 9 kilos) is optimized for vertical farms, rack systems and growth chambers."
Phytofy RL is already being used by NASA and Michigan State University. Osram is using it to carry out research of growth, anthocyanins and taste, conducted in a climate chamber at the TU Munich.
For more information:
Claudia Zehnpfennig
horticulture@osram.com
Osram
Marcel-Breuer-Strasse 6
80807 Munich, Germany
Phone +49 89 6213-0
Fax +49 89 6213-2020
www.osram.com/phytofy
Publication date : 2/27/2019
Plant Factory With Artificial Lighting: Toyoki Kozai's Brilliant Research On An Interesting Practice
According to AgriGarden, 'Plant factory is a highly efficient agriculture system which uses high precision control facilities in the continuous production of crops."
1/9/2019 9:16:19 AM
(MENAFN - GetNews) Dr. Toyoki Kozai's research work is on ' Opportunities and Challenges for Plant Factory with Artificial Lighting (PFAL) (or vertical/indoor farming). Dr Kozai graduated from Chiba University, Japan in 1967. He obtained a Master's degree in 1969, and a PhD degree of Agricultural Engineering in 1972 from the University of Tokyo in 1972. He served as Dean of Faculty of Horticulture and Director of Center for Environment, Health and Field Sciences of Chiba University. He was inaugurated as the President of the prestigious Chiba University in 2005. He resumed his career in research as a professor emeritus in an endowed chair position at the Center for Environment, Health and Field Sciences during 2009-2012. He established Japan Plant Factory Association (non-profit organization) in 2010 together with his colleague, and served as the president until 2018, and is serving as the honorary president to date.
Furthermore, Kozai's academic excellence and his scientific interest can be gauged from the multiple books he has written, namely, 'Smart Plant Factory: The next generation indoor vertical farms (2018), 'LED Lighting for Urban Agriculture (2016), 'Plant Factory: An indoor vertical farm for efficient quality food production (2015), and 'Photoautotrophic (Sugar-free) Micropropagation as a New Micropropagation and Transplant Production System (2005).
His early work on greenhouse light environments, energy savings, ventilation, computer control, knowledge engineering, integrative environment control using a heat pump, fogging and null-balance CO2 enrichment systems, and closed systems with artificial lighting for transplant production in the fields of greenhouse horticulture earned him great recognition in his field.
Kozai has recently been working on 'plant factory with artificial lighting (PFAL) and has been leading the R & D of PFAL. His continuous quest in this field allowed him to dive deeper into this subject. He has been invited as a keynote speaker on the PFAL to more than 20 international symposia during 2015-2018.
According to AgriGarden, 'Plant factory is a highly efficient agriculture system which uses high precision control facilities in the continuous production of crops."
According to Kozai, it is believed that PFAL is expected to contribute to solving the food-environment-resource-health issues concurrently. Kozai has further described the six major components of the PFAL viz., thermally well-insulated, almost closed structure, multi-tier unit with lighting and hydroponic cultivation devices, air conditioners and fans, CO2 supply unit, nutrient solution supply unit and environmental control unit. Furthermore, he has mentioned that relatively large automated PFALs have been built in Japan in the year 2018, and the number of profit-making PFALs has been increasing in Japan since 2016. Besides, there are ongoing large-scale projects in the world hence stressing the fact that this concept is gaining prominence not only in Japan but globally as well.
In addition to the above, Kozai's study throws light on the essential benefits of PFAL as well. First, that PFAL offers a high degree of freedom of environment control and that any environment can be created at minimal costs, thereby making it highly cost-effective. Second, all rates of resource supply, plant production and waste production can be measured and controlled. Then, Resource Use Efficiency (RUE) (amount ratio of resource fixed or kept in plants to the resource supplied to the PFAL) can be estimated online for each resource element including electricity, water, CO2, fertilizer and seeds. This shows the convenience and the hassle-free process.
Currently, compared to the greenhouse, the PFAL can save water consumption for irrigation per kg of produce by 95% by recycling use of transpired water vapor from plants (The transpired water vapor is condensed and collected at the cooling coil of air conditioners and returned to nutrient solution tank). The productivity of leafy lettuce per unit land area is more than 100 times higher in the PFAL than in the open field. Thanks to this high productivity per unit land area, the PFAL can be built in urban areas with non-fertile or contaminated soil, resulting in the reductions of CO2 footprint, loss of produce during transportation, and delivery time of fresh vegetables to citizens.
However amongst all the benefits, there is one issue which still remains unresolved i.e., a methodology to find an optimal set of environmental factors automatically to maximize the CP (or productivity) under given conditions is yet to be developed. To maximize the CP, unit economic value, plant growth rate, percent marketable portion, cost of each resource element, consumption and RUE of each resource element needs to be measured or estimated online, and be integrated to calculate the CP.
Kozai's excellent research suggests how the CP can be more than doubled and the impact and the expected increase this will have on the PFAL market. He has therefore proposed the reduction in cost per kg of produce, an increase in sales per m2 of cultivation space by introducing recent advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence. Currently, costs for electricity, labour and depreciation for the initial investment account for about 20%, 20% and 30%, respectively. The rest (about 20%) is for seeds, fertilizer, water, containers, maintenance, etc.
Further, Kozai has the discussed the idea of next-generation PFAL (n-PFAL) and the associated requirements, scheme for R & D, challenges and opportunities. According to him, n-PFAL needs to create unique environments for plant production to produce high-quality plants with high yields using minimum resources and minimum emission of waste by introducing advanced but inexpensive technologies. He has suggested different technologies, which can be of great use in the same. However, he has submitted some challenges and opportunities, for example, smart LED lighting, phenotyping (plant trait measurement), production management including seed processing and circadian rhythm, efficient use of resources with minimum waste, breeding using DNA markers of plants suited to PFALs, et cetera. He has defined plant phenotyping and has given a detailed account of its usage in n-PFAL. Plant traits include plant architecture, chemical components, physiological status and response, etc.
In the n-PFAL, a huge time-series dataset of plant phenotype (traits), environment and management (human and machine interventions including seed processing) is automatically accumulated in a data warehouse. The data warehouse is connected with a related genome database and other n-PFALs' data warehouse via Internet. This global and local network of n-PFALs each with semi-open database will bring about a paradigm shift of plant/food/agricultural production and breeding of plants suited to PFALs. For example, breeding of plants suited to PFALs can be speeded up using the n-PFAL. Kozai has further recommended four types of models to be implemented in the PFAL: 1) mechanistic models for photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration and growth, and for substance, energy and monetary balance, 2) multi-variate statistic models, 3) behaviour (or surrogate) models, and 4) AI (or deep learning) models.
Kozai's study has won great acclaim amongst the researchers and his brilliant research on PFAL, an upcoming innovation will be of great use not only nationally but internationally as well.
Brick Street Farms is a Hidden Gem Producing Fresh Food
By Vanessa Ruffes, FOX 13 News
February 27, 2019
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (FOX 13) -
Tampa Bay is full of hidden gems, and even hidden farms.
Brick Street Farms is nestled off of 2nd Avenue South in downtown St. Petersburg, and is making the most of its modest space. It opened about two years ago. At the time, it only served its produce to local restaurants and hotels. Then, more than a year ago, the farm opened its doors to the public with retail and farm memberships.
"We specialize in all things leafy green," said owner Shannon O'Malley, who actually worked with computers before switching to farming. "So, we have about 10 to 12 varieties of lettuce. We do four to five varieties of baby kale, chard, herbs, edible flowers, microgreens, sprouts."
All the growing magic happens inside several containers, which totals roughly 1,200 square feet, but O'Malley says her farm is able to generate 430,000-square-feet worth of produce.
"We actually grow 8 to 10 acres of produce every five weeks," O'Malley says. "We might look small, but we're actually a commercial grower. We go through 50,000 plants every five weeks."
Brick Street grows its crops hydroponically, striving to do the most with the least waste, tailoring water and light conditions specifically to what each type of plant likes.
"We use an LED lighting system, which means there's no sunlight used. We control temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, nutrient levels," O'Malley says. "We make every bit of use of the vertical space, which is why we're able to cram so much into a small space."
All that effort has put Brick Street's team up to its eyeballs in leafy greens, but the farm is starting to branch out, recently digging into tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries.
It doesn't get fresher than this either. O'Malley said everything goes straight from the farm to their market on-site or to their buyers within hours.
Speaking of the market -- shoppers and farm members will find small batch products either grown on the property or locally made. In addition to produce, the market offers items like honey, vinegars, and kimchi. O'Malley says the offerings are constantly changing too.
"I definitely think this is the way of the future," O'Malley says. "People really want to know where their food is coming from. We do everything without chemicals, without pesticides, no dirt, no bugs, non-GMO, no animal products, no animal fertilizers so we eliminate all the contaminant risks with our produce."
If you're interested in a tour, you can schedule a group tour. For more information, check out Brick Street Farms' website.