The University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center is gearing up for it’s Hydroponic Intensive Workshops that will occur in January 2019. The CEAC’s unique facilities support a quality of learning experience, where knowledge from classroom lectures is immediately applied in the greenhouse. The length and thoroughness of CEAC intensive workshop is unmatched! You’ll be ripe with knowledge and bleeding green by the time you leave. CEAC Intensive Workshops have been around for 10 years. With a database of 100’s of common questions and strategic delivery of content, we will address many of your questions naturally throughout the workshop. In addition,…
Author: urbanagnews
Milan Kluko, the Founder of Green Spirit Farms and Harvest Moon Farms, spoke at the Indoor Ag Science Café this month. Green Spirit Farms is one of the oldest indoor farms in the U.S. located in New Buffalo MI with several additional operations in Chicago, Detroit, and Puerto Rico. In his presentation ‘Our Stories – Green Spirit Farms to Harvest Moon Farms’, Milan shares his vision, history, operation data (crops, yield and costs), technological advancement, international outreach projects, and more! This is a powerful testimonial of successful indoor farming. Indoor Ag Science Café is a monthly online forum organized by…
The Indiana Horticultural Congress is an educational meeting designed to meet the needs of fruit, vegetable, wine, organics, and specialty crop growers and marketers in Indiana and surrounding states. Sessions will focus on climate, insect management and pollinators, biostimulants and much more. Speakers include Dr. Annette Wszelaki from Tennessee, Dr. Lori Hoagland from Purdue and Dr. Matt Ruark from Univ. of Wisconsin, and Purdue’s own team of experts. If you are interested, please visit https://www.inhortcongress.org/
Tom Zoellner and Penny McBride, two out of the three members of the Board of Directors for the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF), have resigned with immediate effect. This leaves Christine Zimmermann-Loessl the single remaining member of the Board of Directors. The decision to step down has not been taken lightly and is based on irreconcilable differences within the AVF Board regarding financial management, accountability and managing conflicts of interest. After a long and intense period of internal discussion and concerted attempts to resolve the differences in a constructive manner, no meaningful progress has been achieved. As a consequence, Zoellner…
As a result of his postdoctoral research tenure at NASA Kennedy Space Center, Mickens has published two manuscripts on the effect of light quality on ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce and “Rubi F1’ red pak choi, a Chinese cabbage. It was found that various combination of colors, or “light recipes” could be used to manipulate plant morphology (shape), yield, and nutrient content of any crop species. It was also discovered that not all plants respond the same to the same recipe, but that each crop has an ideal lighting regime that can be identified, but it all depends on the needs…
The second ‘Indoor Ag Science Café’ of this month had Dr. Cary Mitchell, as a speaker. Funded by NASA and USDA SCRI, Cary has a long research history focusing on energy savings while maximizing crop productivities through his in-depth understanding of plant physiology under controlled environment. In his presentation ‘Lighting Strategies for Energy Savings’ introduced his innovative approach to optimize the lighting environment. Indoor Ag Science Café is a monthly online forum organized by three scientists (Chieri Kubota, Ohio State U; Erik Runkle, Michigan State U; and Cary Mitchell, Purdue U). Please contact kubota.10@osu.edu to join the café.
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. These researchers developed a series of monthly DLI maps to provide a tool for horticulturists to estimate the potential growth…
Fritz Meier from Gebrüder Meier Gemüsekulturen AG in Dällikon, Switzerland, runs a a horticultural company together with his brother and sister. It’s about 100 hectares of open fields and 10 hectares of greenhouses. They grow cucumber, tomato and eggplant in the warm greenhouse, and in the cold greenhouse there is corn lettuce, radish and for the past year, hydroponic lettuce on mobile systems. They have been working with Codema for the irrigation technology for nine years. When they decided to install a mobile gutter system, they asked Codema for help again. The returns of their new mobile gutter system exceeded…
In 2019, the Horticulture & Product Physiology group, together with Wageningen Plant Research, again will organize a course on lighting in greenhouses and vertical farms. In this course WageningenUR scientists share their unique knowledge with international students, researchers, and horticultural and light experts. The course is held in Wageningen, The Netherlands. Registration for the course in February 2019 is now possible. The course consists of a mixture of interactive classroom lectures, group discussions, demonstrations, and an excursion day. The lectures will be given by a team of experts of Wageningen University & Research. Lecturers include Prof. Leo Marcelis, Dr. Cecilia Stanghellini,…
University researchers are seeking input from potted and fresh cut culinary herb growers in order to initiate a national research and extension project aimed to address the needs of the emerging industry. Your anonymous input for our survey will help to steer the focus of this project. Currently, researchers from Michigan State University, Purdue University, Iowa State University, Clemson University, Kansas State University and the USDA-ARS are writing a USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative grant proposal to fund this project that will focus on marketing, economic barriers, food safety, plant protection, production, and post-harvest issues related to culinary herbs. If…
Originally published by Edenworks, Johnny Bowman Three trends define the history of packaged salad in the United States: convenience, shelf life, and safety. As enthusiastic packaged salad historians, we thought we’d share our cliff notes on how these trends have changed over time, and offer a glimpse of how these trends play in the future. The 1950 and 1960s: Refrigerated supply chain and convenience. Coming out of World War II, Americans ditched their backyard vegetable gardens (“Victory Gardens”) and embraced store-bought goods in a big way. TV dinners, developed during the war to feed air crews, grew in popularity as the…
For players from the lettuce production chain, the annual Lettuce Demo Days is the place to be. In recent weeks, growers, processors, traders, retailers, and food suppliers have come to ’s Gravenzande from far and wide to get to know more about the most promising new lettuce varieties and developments. Vegetable breeding company BASFpresented its full commercial range of lettuce for the European market, including a number of promising newcomers. BASF showed new varieties for both open-field and hydroponic cultivation. Iceberg Lettuce Highlights “In order to accommodate local temperature differences and different soil types, we always strive for considerable diversity…
This month’s ‘Indoor Ag Science Café’ featured Robert Colangelo, Founder of Green Sense Farms, as a speaker. In his presentation ‘Growing the Vertical Farming Industry – How Industry and Academia can Work Together’, Colangelo discussed the current status of indoor farming industries, gaps and cultural differences between businesses and academia, as well as possible strategies to work together on R&D for common critical technologies. Indoor Ag Science Café is a monthly online forum organized by three scientists (Chieri Kubota, Ohio State U; Erik Runkle, Michigan State U; and Cary Mitchell, Purdue U). Please contact kubota.10@osu.edu to join the café.
Our last Greenhouse Training Online course for 2018! Interpret water quality tests for irrigation of greenhouse and nursery crops, select appropriate water treatment technologies, and design a water treatment and monitoring system. Irrigation Water & Treatment is the final course for 2018 in the Greenhouse Training Online series offered by the University of Florida IFAS Extension, winner of the 2018 American Society for Horticultural Science Extension Division Education Materials Award. This is taught at an advanced level, designed for an experienced grower or technical manager. Lessons are offered in English and Spanish, and are taught by professors from six universities…