Category: News

How can sensors increase efficiency, effectiveness of your IPM strategies?

Monitoring and collecting environmental conditions during controlled environment agriculture production can assist growers in making the best use of integrated pest management strategies.

While maintaining the proper temperature and humidity is important to ensure the optimum growing conditions for controlled environment agriculture, these environmental factors become even more important when using biological controls.

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Updated daily light integral (DLI) maps now available

New DLI maps have been created from an updated database that includes data from 1998 to 2009.

Daily light integral (DLI) is the amount of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) received each day as a function of light intensity and duration. DLI maps display the ambient light delivered daily during each month across the entire United States. The original maps released in 2002 were researched and developed by Jim Faust at Clemson University and Joanne Logan at the University of Tennessee.

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Current, Powered by GE and Stockbridge Technology Centre Partner to Research the Farm of the Future

This article was originally posted on currentbyge.com

  • Stockbridge Technology Centre’s Vertical Farming Development Facility to enable growers to test and model their individual urban farm setup prior to investment
  • Aims to propel the success of the vertical farming industry, projected to be worth $13.9 billion USD in 20241 and generate more “farmable land” to address future global food production pressures
  • Current by GE’s Arize LED horticulture solution will help researchers test growth of crops such as leafy greens and herbs in different conditions

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Does it make economic sense for you to install grow lights?

The Lighting Approaches to Maximize Profits (LAMP) project aims to determine how growers can maximize their return on investment when considering installing grow lights.

As light emitting diodes (LEDs) become more efficient and more affordable, an increasing number of greenhouse and plant factory growers will consider installing LED luminaires to light their crops. In the case of greenhouse growers, these luminaires would provide light to supplement natural sunlight. For plant factory growers, production depends entirely on the light provided by an artificial light source including LEDs, high pressure sodium or metal halide luminaires.

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Controlling basil downy mildew might be as simple as turning on a light

The use of supplemental light to control downy mildew on food and ornamental crops could be integrated into current disease management practices.

Downy mildew is a major disease on both ornamental and food crops. Whether these crops are grown outdoors or in a controlled environment, environmental conditions, generally cool to moderate temperatures and high humidity, are favorable to downy mildew development. Warm temperatures and high humidity are conducive to powdery mildew development.

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Topclear: for a spotlessly clean greenhouse roof!

By Sudlac

Topclear is the perfect cleaner for removing Sudlac Eclipse® LD, Transpar®, Optifuse® and Optifuse® IR coatings. With this product, the grower decides when to remove the coating. Simply spray on Topclear, leave it to wash off in the rain, and you’ll have a clean greenhouse roof that allows maximum light into the greenhouse. This is particularly important in the fall and winter to ensure optimum growth, quality and fruit setting.

 

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BioBee USA and Hort Americas partner to bring growers biologically-based IPM

BioBee Biological Systems, headquartered in Sde Eliyaho, Israel, is at the forefront of implementing biologically-based integrated pest management (IPM) solutions in controlled environment agriculture and open-field production systems. BioBee USA, a subsidiary of BioBee, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., has partnered with horticultural supplier Hort Americas in Bedford, Texas, to work together to educate and provide greenhouse growers, vertical farmers, indoor agriculturalists and hydroponic growers with a wide range of biological control products.

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NASA developing LED light recipes that astronauts and growers can use

The LED light recipes that NASA scientists are developing on Earth could eventually be used by astronauts in space and growers on the ground to optimize the production of food crops.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been growing plants in space for research since the early 1980s. Within the last five years, NASA has been focusing on growing plants in space primarily for food production and as an astronaut life support system.

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NASA Taps Osram to Support Its Food Production Research

Osram’s smart horticulture lighting system prototype used in NASA ground research to help provide space crews with a reliable source of fresh food

WILMINGTON, Mass. & KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–Osram, a global high-tech lighting company, today announced it is providing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a customized version of its proprietary connected horticulture research lighting system, Phytofy RL. The smart lighting software, coupled with a unique setup of connected grow light fixtures, will supplement the lighting technology used in NASA’s Food Production Research focused on production of salad-type crops for crews during space travel. All software, hardware and LEDs in Phytofy were developed by Osram. Osram has developed a broad portfolio of horticulture LEDs that irradiate the specific wavelengths needed for optimum growth of a wide variety of plants and flowers, allowing the light to be adapted specifically for the needs of various crops.

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Are you looking for an economical, effective way to incorporate dissolved oxygen into your irrigation water?

Incorporating air or oxygen into irrigation water using nanobubbles can improve crop yields and reduce susceptibility to disease pathogens.

What started out as a way of making wastewater treatment systems more efficient with oxygen enrichment has expanded to how nanobubble aeration technology can improve production of agricultural crops. Moleaer Inc. in Torrance, Calif., filed a patent on nanobubble aeration technology in 2016 with the intention of using it as a way to deliver gas in a number of different applications.

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Hort Americas looks to be a connector of products and knowledge for the horticulture industry

Whether growers are producing vegetables, ornamentals or other hydroponic crops, Hort Americas is working to provide its customers with the products and knowledge they need to be successful.

When Hort Americas in Bedford, Texas, started operating as a wholesale horticulture distributor in March 2009, the company had no existing customer base.

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What are the benefits of maintaining the optimum substrate oxygen level?

Increasing the oxygen level in the root zone can ensure healthy root growth and can impact crop yields.

Low oxygen levels in the growing substrate can play havoc with the health of both vegetable and ornamental plants. Shalin Khosla, greenhouse vegetable specialist at Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in Harrow, Ontario, said a substrate oxygen level below 5 parts per million can have a negative effect on plant growth.

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Growing microgreens with LED grow lights in Sonora, Mexico

(Español abajo.)

Urban grower Karla Garcia is proud to announce the creation of her new company, Microgreens FLN based in Sonora, Mexico. Karla is a recent graduate with honors and a master’s degree in plant science from the University of Arizona. She is proud of her company’s commitment specializing in microgreens production using an indoor vertical farming strategy. Microgreens are an emerging class of specialty leafy greens and herbs. The crops are harvested when the cotyledons are fully developed and in some cases when the young plants have one true leaf.

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2017 retail sales of organic fresh produce reach nearly $5 billion

The Organic Produce Network and Nielsen report sales of organic fresh produce items approached $5 billion in 2017, an 8 percent increase from the previous year. Nearly 2 billion pounds of organic produce were sold in grocery stores last year, which is a 10 percent volume increase from 2016.

At U.S. retail stores, sales of organic fresh vegetables were $2.4 billion. Organic fresh fruit sales exceeded $1.6 billion. Sales of nearly $1 billion in organic value-added produce items brought total sales to $4.8 billion in 2017.

In 2017 organic packaged salad was again the leading organic fresh produce item, approaching $1 billion in sales. Packaged salad still accounts for one in five organic dollars.

Topping the sales in organic fruit were berry crops, which saw a 22 percent increase in volume sales. Organic berry sales, which include strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, topped $586 million in 2017.

http://www.organicproducenetwork.com/article/384/nielsen-and-opn-announce-organic-fresh-produce-retail-sales-reach-nearly-5-billion-in-2017

What are the benefits of applying greenhouse shading products?

Sudlac shading products give greenhouse growers of flowers and vegetables the ability to increase and extend production during periods of warm temperatures and high light levels.

High temperatures and high light levels, especially during the summer can have negative effects on ornamental and vegetable crops produced in protected structures, including greenhouses. An economical way for growers to reduce light and temperature levels is by applying shading products to greenhouse glazing materials.

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Over $17 million available for organic research funding

USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has released its Request for Applications (RFA) for the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI). OREI grants provide crucial support to the organic industry by funding research, education, and extension projects to improve and advance organic agriculture.

A total of $17.6 million is expected to be available for projects designated in OREI’s eight legislatively defined purposes (including the biological, physical and social sciences) in fiscal year (FY) 2018. All applications for consideration are to be submitted by March 1, 2018.

NIFA has identified nine priority areas for FY 2018, including a new priority focused specifically on policy. This new priority area is intended for projects that “identify marketing, policy, and other socioeconomic barriers to the expansion of organic agriculture in the United States and develop strategies to address them. Lobbying and advocacy activities do not fit under this priority.”