Any business can fail for any number of reasons, but indoor farming is an incredibly delicate organism that depends on many disparate factors being perfectly aligned and in balance. This increases the risk of failure for those unaware of the number of plates that need to be kept spinning in perfect time. This list is not definitive but gives you a good idea of the most common mistakes to avoid.
Continue reading Indoor Farming: How Can You Ensure Success?
Duckweeds are a family of aquatic plants that can be found floating on still or slow-moving bodies of water worldwide. Also known as bayroot or watermeal, duckweed is a popular food in Southwest Asia. Duckweed is a major source of protein, which accounts for 40 percent of its dry weight. It’s also the world’s fastest growing plant.
Continue reading Could duckweed be the next big vertical farm crop?
Continue reading Big Tex Urban Farms is using hydroponics to achieve its Million Servings Mission
Basil is one of the most popular culinary herbs. Whether grown as a potted crop or for fresh cut sales, basil is an herb that’s in demand year-round. Growers looking to add edibles to their product mix should consider basil to be a must-have herb in their product offerings.
Continue reading Do you want to sell the freshest, most flavorful and fragrant cut basil?
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.
Many growers of ornamental plants including annuals and perennials traditionally use a peat-based substrate such as 70 percent peat, 30 percent perlite. The growers, who produce these crops in containers, will often use the same substrates if they expand their crop offerings to include hydroponically-grown edible crops, including lettuces and leafy greens.
Continue reading Industry survey seeks information on hydroponic food production
We have been receiving a lot of questions about Pre-Empt. He are some responses to the common questions:
Maintaining the proper soluble salts (electrical conductivity) level and pH are critical in hydroponic systems like nutrient film technique and floating rafts. While monitoring these properties are important, growers should not overlook the importance that temperature, oxygen level and microbial activity play in the growth of plants in these production systems.
“It’s not as much about maintaining root health as it is about managing the conditions in the rhizosphere, which is the region around the plant roots,” said Rosa Raudales, assistant professor of horticulture and greenhouse extension specialist at the University of Connecticut. “The area around the roots undergoes a lot of biological and chemical activity. Microorganisms in the rhizosphere feed on the exudate of the roots. Managing the rhizosphere and the conditions in the nutrient solution are critical to maintaining plant health.”
Photo courtesy of Rosa Raudales, Univ. of Conn.
While providing the proper air temperature in a greenhouse or controlled environment agriculture system is important, maintaining the optimum root temperature can have a bigger impact on the health and production time of a crop.
“If higher temperatures are maintained in the root zone then the plants are going to lose a lot of energy,” Raudales said. “Temperatures above the optimum in the root zone affect the cell membrane integrity of the roots. A disruption of the cell membranes affects the function of the roots resulting in less nutrient uptake, which affects crop cycles and yields.
“If plants are grown at root temperatures lower than the optimum, the plants grow slower because their metabolism is slower. In the worst case scenario, if freezing temperatures occur then ice crystals could form in the cells resulting in cell leakage and cell disruption.”
Cornell University researchers have conducted studies (http://www.cornellcea.com/attachments/Cornell%20CEA%20Lettuce%20Handbook%20.pdf) to identify the specific temperatures that are ideal for hydroponically-grown vegetables.
“Cornell researchers found the temperature of the nutrient solution had a greater effect than the air temperature,” Raudales said. “Lettuce plants exposed to air temperatures ranging between17ºC (62.6ºF) and 31ºC (87.8ºF) had consistent yields as long as the nutrient solution had a consistent temperature of 24ºC (75.2ºF). This research was done in the 1990s, but it still has application today.
“Cornell researchers did a similar study with spinach and they found the optimum root temperature was 22ºC (72ºF). They tested air temperatures ranging from 16ºC to 33ºC (60.8ºF-91.4ºF) and they found as long as the root temperature was 22ºC, the air temperature could be in that range and plants still produced optimum yields. For tomatoes the optimum root temperature is 25ºC (77ºF).”
Raudales said growers who are producing hydroponic leafy greens like lettuce and spinach have the option of installing a water heater to maintain the optimum root temperatures.
“It is easier and less expensive to heat the nutrient solution than to keep the whole greenhouse warm,” she said. “Heating the greenhouse does not make economic sense, when the research indicates that the temperature of the nutrient solution is a more important factor. If a grower is producing lettuce and spinach, which can tolerate lower air temperatures, it makes sense to run the greenhouses cooler and to install a water heater to adjust the nutrient solution temperature.”
Raudales said the dissolved oxygen level in a hydroponic solution needs to be maintained so respiration can occur in the roots.
“When oxygen levels are low in the root zone, the roots do not take up the nutrients required for growth,” she said. “Low oxygen levels cause increased ethylene production in the roots. If there are higher ethylene levels in the roots then the roots start to mature and die. The more oxygen present, the better the nutrient uptake and the better the root system.”
Raudales said there is also an inverse relationship between the oxygen level and solution temperature.
“If the root zone temperature is high, then the oxygen level is going to go down,” she said. “This is another reason why the root zone temperature is so important. The optimum oxygen level should be greater or equal to 6 parts per million of dissolved oxygen in the root zone. Plants should be able to handle 6-10 ppm without any problems.”
Raudales said growers who are using nutrient film technique systems typically don’t need to do any type of aeration. The movement caused by the flow of the water is usually enough to keep the oxygen level high enough in the solution.
Raudales said growers who are using floating rafts usually incorporate some type of oxygen-generating system.
“There are different ways of oxygenating the water,” she said. “One is aerating the water where air is being pumped into the water. Air is not pure oxygen, but it contains enough oxygen for what is needed in the hydroponic solution.”
Raudales said another reason for maintaining a high oxygen level in the hydroponic solution is the effect it can have on pathogenic fungal zoospores.
“If there is more oxygen, then zoospores don’t survive as well,” she said. “Zoospores don’t want completely anaerobic conditions, but they do better in conditions where there is less oxygen.
Pathogens of concern include Phytophthora, Pythium, Thielaviopsis basicola and Xanthomonas.
“Growers should try to keep the oxygen level high. If there are warmer temperatures, then there are lower oxygen levels. When there are lower oxygen levels the plants are not as healthy and more zoospores tend to survive. This is one of the reasons why there tends to be more disease issues during the summer than during the winter.”
Raudales said growers who are using floating rafts should be measuring the oxygen level regularly. Meters for measuring dissolved oxygen look like pH meters and are simple to operate.
Raudales said beneficial microbes are present naturally in water. Commercial products with beneficial microbes can also be incorporated into the hydroponic solution.
“Growers who are using the floating rafts tend to treat the nutrient solution like gold,” she said.
“They don’t want to replace it because they have a solution which is very high in beneficial microbes. Growers can inoculate the nutrient solution with a commercial biocontrol product or they can allow the good microbes to build up with time.
“As long as growers maintain the other parameters at optimum levels, including root temperature, pH, nutrients and oxygen levels, there typically isn’t a problem with diseases. This is very comparable to what happens with plants grown in substrates. The microbes build up naturally in the water just like in a substrate. These microbes feed on the exudates of the roots.
They need carbon sources that they wouldn’t get just from the nutrient solution. The system has to be clean, but it doesn’t have to be clean to the point of having to start with a fresh solution every time a new crop is planted.”
For more: Rosa Raudales, University of Connecticut, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture; (860) 486-6043; rosa.raudales@uconn.edu; http://www.greenhouse.uconn.edu.
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 48 million people are sickened each year by foodborne pathogens. Of those people about 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year.
On Nov. 13, 2015, U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized three rules of the Food Safety Modernization Act. The purpose of FSMA, according to a FDA press release is to prevent foodborne illness “that, for the first time, establish enforceable safety standards for produce farms and makes importers accountable for verifying that imported food meets U.S. safety standards.” FDA said FSMA’s “final rules will help produce farmers and food importers take steps to prevent problems before they occur.”
“The recent multistate outbreak of Salmonella in imported cucumbers that has killed four Americans, hospitalized 157 and sickened hundreds more, is exactly the kind of outbreak these rules can help prevent,” said Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine. “The FDA is working with partners across the government and industry to prevent foodborne outbreaks. The rules will help better protect consumers from foodborne illness and strengthen their confidence that modern preventive practices are in place, no matter where in the world the food is produced.”
The three final rules released by FDA in November are the Produce Safety rule, the Foreign Supplier Verification Programs rule and the Accredited Third-Party Certification rule. FDA has finalized five of the seven major rules that implement the core of FSMA. In September 2015, FDA released the Preventive Controls for Human Food rule, which mandates preventive practices in food processing and storage facilities.
The Produce Safety rule is the one rule that should have the biggest impact on outdoor farmers, greenhouse growers and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) growers. FDA used public comments and input collected during farm visits, meetings and listening sessions to develop a rule it says aims at reducing contamination risk while providing flexibility for farmers and growers.
This rule “establishes science-based standards for growing, harvesting, packing and holding produce that are designed to work effectively for food safety across the wide diversity of produce farms.” The rule’s standards include “requirements for water quality, employee health and hygiene, wild and domesticated animals, biological soil amendments of animal origin such as compost and manure, equipment, tools and buildings.” The rule’s standards have been designed to “help minimize the risk of serious illness or death from consumption of contaminated produce.”
One crop that the rule specifically addresses is the production of sprouts, which have been frequently associated with illness outbreaks. FDA reports that between 1996 and 2014, there were 43 outbreaks, 2,405 illnesses, 171 hospitalizations and three deaths associated with sprouts. Among the outbreaks was the first documented case of Listeria monocytogenes associated with sprouts in the United States. This crop is particularly vulnerable to microbial contamination because of the warm, moist conditions in which they are produced.
The earliest compliance date for the Produce Safety rule for some farms is two year after the effective date of the final rule. There are exemptions to the rule for some producers. These include farms that have an average annual value of produce sold during the previous three-year period of $25,000 or less. Also to be eligible for a qualified exemption, the farm must meet two requirements:
1. The farm must have food sales averaging less than $500,000 per year during the previous three years.
2. The farm’s sales to qualified end-users must exceed sales to all others combined during the previous three years. A qualified end-user is either (a) the consumer of the food or (b) a restaurant or retail food establishment that is located in the same state or the same Indian reservation as the farm or not more than 275 miles away.
Dr. Elizabeth Bihn, director of the Produce Safety Alliance at Cornell University, said prior to FSMA, buyer demand has been the primary driver for implementation of food safety practices. “Consumers are buyers, but they are not protecting a name brand like Kroger or Wegmans or Wal-Mart,” Bihn said. “These companies are protecting their brands. They are going to have much higher stipulations for food safety then the consumers at farmers markets. There is some consumer demand for increased accountability for food safety, but it’s not as big a driver as the retail buyers’ demand. This includes most large food retailers.”
Bihn said greenhouse vegetable growers and CEA growers may receive added pressure from buyers to follow FSMA whether or not they are exempt from it.
“If a buyer tells a grower, “I’m not buying your produce unless you have a third party audit,” and the grower wants that company’s account, then the grower is going to do the audit,” Bihn said. “Legally a grower may be exempt from the regulation, but a buyer may say it doesn’t matter, the grower will still have to meet the regulation. There are still going to be markets that don’t require growers to meet the regulation if their operations are exempt from it. If you are a greenhouse grower who sells to a market that’s not requiring compliance with FSMA and you are exempt from the regulation, you may not have to do anything related to the regulation. Also, I can see third party audits, like the Harmonized GAPs audit, being updated to align with the rules to make sure that growers who have audits done meet the federal regulations as well.”
Even before the final rules were released, Bihn said she is receiving increased inquiries from greenhouse growers about food safety. “Greenhouse growers are trying to decide if they are subject to FSMA rules and how the required practices might fit with what they do with their greenhouses,” she said. “They are trying to figure out if they need to be concerned with meeting food safety regulations. They are going to be in the same situation as field farmers and asking the same questions. Are buyers asking the growers to meet the regulations? Greenhouse growers not subject to the regulations could easily get pushed into following the regulations if their buyers tell them in order to do business with them, the growers must follow the regulations.”
Bihn said her job is to help guide produce growers, whether they are field farmers, urban farmers, greenhouse growers or CEA growers, toward implementing food safety practices.
“Initially there may be frustration, hostility and denial,” she said. “All of those things will occur when growers first hear what they have to do. When they finally sit down and start to learn something about food safety and start to ask how can I fix this, then they start to make progress really fast.
“I love farmers who question everything. They don’t understand why doing something is a risk. They tell me I’ve never killed anyone so what’s the problem. That’s the engagement that I need to get them to think about it. They need to get to where they understand all farms can have produce safety risks and admit that they need to learn something about food safety so that they can make adjustments within their operations and put practices in place to reduce the risks.”
Bihn said she has been encouraging Cornell students majoring in horticulture to get a minor in food science. She has also been encouraging students majoring in food science who are interested in produce safety to get a minor in horticultural production.
“There are food science students who have no idea how farms operate,” she said. “Unfortunately this sometimes results in food science professionals offering ideas for problem solving that may not be doable.”
Bihn said that food safety has traditionally been housed with the food science departments and crop production has been housed with the horticulture department.
“It’s time for there to be some cross pollination between these two departments,” she said. “It has been slow to happen. We now have a Masters of Professional Studies degree at Cornell that merges horticulture and food science. There are jobs out there, but they are difficult to fill because there are people who know production or there are people who know food pathogens, but there are very few people who know both.”
Bihn said she has received requests from her horticulture colleagues at Cornell to give guest lectures on food safety and to collaborate on publications about incorporating food safety guidelines into field publications.
“The fruit and vegetable industry as a whole is certainly saying food safety is something that we need to be incorporating,” she said.
For more: Dr. Elizabeth Bihn, Cornell University, Department of Food Science; (315) 787-2625; eab38@cornell.edu.
Produce Safety Alliance, http://www.
National Good Agricultural Practices Program, http://www.gaps.cornell.edu.
David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.
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Barry Adler, owner of RainFresh Harvests in Plain City, Ohio, was exposed to the use of solar power as a renewable energy source for greenhouses when he was a graduate student at Virginia Tech. He continued to be involved with the use of greenhouses during the 22 years he worked at the Scotts Co., including conducting fertilizer research. Because of his familiarity with greenhouse production it made sense for Adler to look at it as a business option when he left Scotts in 2002.
Continue reading RainFresh Harvests uses solar and wind power to sustainably grow its business
Philips Horti LED Division releases a new video of a commercial farm using vertical growing methods, hydroponics and led grow lights to produce hydroponic lettuce.
Enjoy and let us know if there are any questions. You can contact Hort Americas at infohortamericas at gmail dot com to learn more.
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Hort Americas is please to offer the first in a series of innovative educational videos geared toward commercial greenhouse growers and hydroponic vegetable growers in controlled environment agriculture facilities.
The first will be product videos that provide you (the viewer) the necessary facts and information you need to incorporate these tools at your growing facility.
The second will be educational only videos. These videos will focus on horticultural and hydroponic topics. Topics will range from managing the root zone to managing light. Please email us at infohortamericas@gmail.com if there are any specific topics you would like to see tackled.
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Visit our corporate website at https://hortamericas.com
Hort Americas recently finished its last round of training on Philips GreenPower Horticultural (Hydroponic) LED Product Portfolio.
This training not only included intense product training, but it also included training on LED applications for:
1.) Hydroponic Production of Greenhouse Vegetable Crops like Tomatoes, Peppers and Cucumbers
2.) Hydroponic Production of Greenhouse Leafy Green and Herb Crops
3.) Greenhouse Ornamentals
4.) Seed Production
5.) Tissue Culture
6.) Growth Chambers and Grow Rooms
7.) Needs of Research Facilities and Universities
8.) Multi-layer Production
9.) Vertical Farming
10.) Urban Agriculture in Controlled Environments
Next step will be UL certification for the complete line of Philips GreenPower LEDs which are currently being trialed and commercially used in a wide variety of growing facilities around the world.
PlantLab along with many other forward thinkers is working with LEDs.
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Not alot of time for a post today, but wanted to put a teaser out there that we are looking at an organic fertilizer that should fit well with Hydroponically Grown Greenhouse Greens, Herbs and Veggies.
Email infohortamericas@gmail.com for details or check out our facebook page for images http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hort-Americas/133476796695370#!/pages/Hort-Americas/133476796695370
Hope everyone is having a good summer!
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Hort Americas would like to welcome Floricultura (Growers of Premium Quality Orchids) to the USA.
Below is a great video (even though it is in Dutch) from Hortifair 2009.
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Hort Americas is proud to share this link from CNNMoney.com. The link takes you to an Article on Urban Agriculture (Farming) and the impact it can have on our future. It includes mentions of innovative companies like: Eco Spirit, TerraSphere Systems, Big Box Farms, Gotham Greens and Cityscape Farms and innovators such as Dickson Depommier.
Please read more about the article here:
Urban Farming 2.0: No Soil, No Sun
If there are any questions please email us at infohortamericas@gmail.com.
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For this post only video.
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