If you’re heading to Cultivate’19 in July stop by the Hort Americas’ trade show booth to see the latest products for controlled environment agriculture and horticulture production.
Horticultural distributor Hort Americas is participating in this year’s Cutlivate’19 trade show, July 13-16, in Columbus, Ohio. Last year Hort Americas moved its booth (Booth No. 3317) to a larger location on the trade show floor. This larger booth enables Hort Americas to show more of the products it offers to controlled environment growers.
Attendees will have an opportunity to see a wide variety of production-related products, including LED lights, environmental sensors, greenhouse shading compounds, a variety of conventional organic and hydroponic fertilizers and growing substrates. Stop by the Hort Americas booth at Cultivate’19 and let its team members talk with you about its hydroponic and conventional growing products for edible crops, hemp and ornamental plants.
Suppliers talk about what’s new for 2019
Hort Americas sat down with representatives of some of its key suppliers to talk about what has them excited about their company’s product offerings along with what is happening in the controlled environment agriculture industry.
Current, powered by GE
Bruno D’Amico, Design and Product Manager
1. What’s new with Current, powered by GE’s lighting product line for 2019?
We are super excited to release more members of the Arize Element Top Light family, including the industry’s first one-for-one LED replacement for 1,000-watt high pressure sodium (HPS) products. The Arize Element is the most advanced greenhouse grow light on the market, enabling growers to grow more while consuming less power.
With efficacy levels up to 3.5 µmol/J, the Element is also the most efficient grow light on the market. The Element features a unique design that minimizes shadowing in the greenhouse, allowing more natural sunlight to penetrate. With multiple mounting features, including universal options, it also provides growers flexibility in installation.
2. What crops are these products applicable for?
Our products cater to a wide range of crops, including hydroponic lettuce and herbs, hemp and ornamental plants. What’s unique about our approach is that we combine our unmatched experience in lighting with the application knowledge of our trusted partner Hort Americas to design light recipes that maximize results, setting growers up for success no matter what they’re growing.
3. How are these products different from your competitors?
Our products are designed with purpose. We are very close with growers and listen to their feedback, allowing us to build products with the features that they value the most.
For example, we took our first Element top light and designed the second generation with their feedback in mind. We included multiple spectrums tailored to their growing needs. We completely redesigned our installation method to easily install on existing structures, which means growers can spend less time installing and more time growing. We also offer a five-year warranty as standard, for their complete peace of mind.
When growers choose our products, they are choosing products designed exactly for their needs.
4. What most excites you about 2019?
Connecting growers with new technology and learning from them. Technology in the horticultural lighting space is developing at a rapid pace, allowing growers to achieve greater outcomes than ever before by increasing crop yields, productivity and quality, all while reducing their operating costs. We’re excited to introduce growers to our complete portfolio of solutions that enable efficient growth at an industrial scale, and we look forward to their feedback. They are the key to our success.
30MHz
Antony Yousefian, Director
1. What’s new with 30MHz’s product line for 2019?
There has been a wide range of functionalities added to our data-platform that are cracking the traditional barriers. An example of this is proximity to knowledge. People have to travel far to get advice or travel to see their crop. All this contributes to the slow feedback loop and analog nature.
30MHz feels that information is not a monopoly but a sharable good. That’s why we believe one of our most important updates is the implementation of a data feed and social features such as @mentions and the ability to upload images to that feed.
You can compare this with the way social media let people interact with each other, only in this case the subject of converse is crop data. It enables growers to explore information in a completely new way.
For example, they are able to invite crop consultants or IPM- or light-experts within their data environment and have them take a look at VPD, temperature, CO2 and PAR values. Another illustration of the social aspect of the platform is that growers with multi-location facilities, whether they are in the same country or not, are able to consult each other in a blink of an eye.
Another important aspect we’ve added is the capability to ingest climate computer data breaking down a common data silo, adding instant value in terms of time and energy-savings.
Jonathan Zwinkels, owner of Madestein, UK, has a clear view on this.
“Our experience of the ZENSIE/Priva integration was that it was fairly low effort on our part,” Zwinkels said. “We didn’t have to do a huge amount. It was quick, efficient and remote. We’ve seen a variety of benefits from bringing these data sources together.
“We’re able to cross-reference data. An example is VPD of basil leaf or stress points on lettuce. We’re able to graph the VPD data we get through ZENSIE and understand it in the context of climate control or ventilation positions. We can dig into the relationships between them, see the effects, and understand what needs to be changed to achieve our desired outcomes.”
2. What crops are these products applicable for?
Our data-platform is applicable to any kind of crop, including greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, hydroponic lettuce and herbs, strawberries, hemp and ornamental plants, or cultivation process. That’s because we do not provide consultancy, but facilitate the sector in every way we can.
3. How are these products different from your competitors?
We don’t see ourselves as competitors to any platform that is directly connected to a company’s own consultancy services. Our data-platform ZENSIE is not better because it’s faster, cheaper, equipped with more functionalities, etc. It’s better because it’s different. By different, we mean independent, transparent, value adding and community connecting. We’re here to help the sector digitize, to create more value with the same amount or even fewer resources.
4. What most excites you about 2019?
From a 30MHz point of view, we’re really happy with our recent series A funding. 30MHz has received an investment of 3.5 million EUR. The amount is used to accelerate product development and to further improve worldwide distribution. It’s our aim to create a space where all products and services are digitally accessible for growers, advisers, suppliers, distributors and researchers.
From a market perspective, we see a clear transition happening within the sector. There’s a tentative development going on in which growers, consultants, distributors and researchers are acknowledging digitization of processes more and more. Being able to grow more with less inevitably will require the assistance of digital aids.
OSRAM
Chooi Yiang Keh, National Sales Manager – Professional and Industrial Applications
1. What’s new with OSRAM’s product line for 2019?
After extensive product field testing with selected partners (NASA and Michigan State University) we’re ready to present and make available to customers our new horticulture light solution: Phytofy RL. With this smart horticulture light system, we would like to allow worldwide growers to really play with light, creating the best light recipe (spectra, intensity and photoperiod) for their crops.
2. What crops is Phytofy RL applicable for?
The system has been designed to be as flexible as possible for the end users. The wide light spectrum from UV-A (385 nm) up to far red (730 nm), the six independently dimmable light channels and the possibility of grouping together more fixtures will permit the end user to experiment with several crops types. With our partners we extensively tested microgreens, leafy greens, ornamental flowers and tissue culture plants.
In addition, we know the importance of making a profit from the beginning of the investment on new light sources. Therefore to enable customers a jump start we provide after product registration, a set of five different light recipes (all tested in OSRAM’s Smart Farming laboratory) to start growing basil, red lettuce, snack tomatoes, etc. Our dedicated email address (horticulture@osram.com) is open to customers (and potential ones) for any questions of such regard.
3. How is Phytofy RL different from your competitors?
To reduce risks of product commoditization, we identified some unique selling points as key pillars during Phytofy RL’s development.
- Ultra-wide light spectrum. The presence of an UV-A channel combined with multiple wavelengths combinations (blue, green, hyper red, far red and warm white) allows researchers and all Phytofy RL users, in general, to build dedicated and unique light recipes
- Photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) and light intensity focus. Quality matters, but quantity even more. To enable researches on many kinds of crops as well as determining the most efficient and effective light recipes, the quantity and the disposition of the LEDs has been deeply investigated during the ideation phase to maximize the PPF metric without requiring active cooling and granting the most uniform possible light distribution.
- Smart functions. Control and integration with other systems are crucial for a product like Phytofy RL. Designed-on-purpose control software, running on most common PC operating systems, provided with a unique irradiance map feature permits the end user to control the Phytofy RL LED light system without further interactions with the crops. Additionally, should customers need a deeper system integration with their control systems, like climatic control chambers, OSRAM can provide communication protocol specification
- Flat design. Phytofy RL is optimized for rack systems and vertical farms without needing active cooling.
4. What most excites you about 2019?
OSRAM’s vision is to become a high-tech photon champion company. We strongly think that with Phytofy RL we will support this idea within the smart farming industry. Phytofy RL will create the new requirements baseline for growers when selecting light systems for crop research. Last, but not least, we are eager to see the first integrations between light fixture, crops sensors and control systems. There is definitely interesting times ahead of us.
Sudlac
Ruben Lensing, Area Export Manager
1. What’s new with Sudlac’s product line for 2019?
In the North American market we’ve introduce the F-series, self-removing paints that wear off gradually over time and do not need to be cleaned off at the end of the season. This range is designed to offer growers an effective, user-friendly solution. It also makes a huge difference in costs because you do not need a cleaning product.
We also have introduced a new line of protection paints for greenhouses. Applied on various elements of the greenhouse structure, these solutions make it possible to maintain and protect your greenhouses from premature wear and tear.
2. What crops are these products applicable for?
The F-series can be used for all kind of crops, including greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, hydroponic lettuce and herbs, ornamental plants and hemp.
3. How are these products different from your competitors?
Our F-series are liquid paints so this is different from our competition, which offer mostly self-removable products in powder form. The difference between a liquid and powder is that a liquid is easier to apply and you achieve a more homogeneous layer.
Each of the Eclipse F-series (F2/F4/F6) paints produces the same results in terms of the shading rate, but offers a different protection time. The higher the number following the F, the longer the protection will last.
4. What most excites you about 2019?
I see that Sudlac is growing as a brand in the United States. I worked with Chris Higgins and his team at Hort Americas for the last two years to improve the brand name Sudlac has in the United States. The result is that a lot of growers used our products and have switched to Sudlac.
If growers are interested in our F-series and our other products, they are welcome to visit our trade show Booth No. 3416 at Cultivate’19. I would be happy to explain Sudlac’s product range. Sudlac’s booth is next to Hort Americas’s booth No. 3317.
This article is property of Hort Americas and was written by David Kuack, a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, TX.
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