Innovation In Horticulture 08

Windows of innovation into horticulture Lasers that prune plants or act as early warning radar for disease, algae used as biofuel, biomass fuel instead of gas, and remote sensors to 'read' a plant's stress aura. They're all part of a sweeping wave of innovation in the horticulture industry. Just like farmers carrying a GPS unit, horticulture operators are at home with a laptop that tracks the world under glass. Technology is everywhere out in the greenhouse. Operators are looking to cut energy costs, reduce fertilizers, recycle wastewater, grow healthier product, improve yields, and be better earth stewards. At Niagara College, the innovation has landed in the photonics department.

“It’s very neat,” said Alex McGlashan, co-ordinator of photonics technology and from a farming family himself. “It’s really fascinating stuff to get into.” He should know: his department is deep into multi-year research -- with the help of Ontario Innovation Trust money -- on adapting use of lasers to pruning and perhaps harvesting plants and vegetables. The laser story begins at Sunrise Greenhouses. The family-owned Vineland company had a costly problem: it was losing thousands of dollars worth of plants to botrytis. A fungal disease, the gray mould blight infects a wide array of herbaceous annual and perennial plants. Mechanical pruning methods can spread disease microbes as the equipment moves from rack to rack. Such cutters can also promote infection at the wound site as they trim plants. A high-energy laser beam might be a solution, thought Sunrise general manager Rod Bierhuizen. So he turned to Niagara College. Staff and students in the laser lab are using a carbon dioxide laser with a beam in the infrared wavelength range. The beam can cauterize the trimming point, blocking access to disease pathogens. Since there is no mechanical contact, disease doesn't spread. A robotic laser system might cost at least $100,000 but research “has showed it works,” said Bierhuizen, whose enterprise has 200,000 square feet under glass. Sunrise has since cut its botrytis losses by working closely with the suppliers of its feedstock plants, but it remains very interested in the laser research. McGlashan casts a bold look into the future in suggesting automated use of lasers and photonics technologies in farming and horticulture. He wonders if it might be possible to do laser harvesting, such as reaping sugar cane or corn. “I think there’s something here. I’m not going to say that tomorrow, you’re going to be cutting your shrubs with the light sabre . . . but we see a future direction there.” The college is also pursuing early-stage detection of disease not visible to the naked eye. For example, fluorescence microscopy can show a specific colour identified with symptoms exhibited by cells ravaged by a disease, but not seen in healthy tissue. This fluorescence imaging can be captured on plants using UV excitation. Energy is always a big greenhouse concern. In Dunnville, Rosa Flora Ltd. has put in three biomass boilers that take wood chips and waste. The idea is to have a “carbon-neutral” heating system, says operations manager Ralph DeBoer. Biomass is also cheaper than natural gas which has roller-coastered from $7 to $15 per gigajoule in the past three years, says DeBoer.

Rosa Flora, a leader in co-generation of heat and electricity, also has an attention-getter: a German-engineered wind turbine that can produce 600 kilowatts per kW/h when the wind blows right. That helps for a company, with its thousands of growlights under double-walled acrylic (not glass), whose power demand varies from 400 to 600 kW. Many greenhouses have installed microclimate sensors that can assess plant temperature, photosynthetic activity, humidity conditions and even stress levels of a plant. The software behind such sensors can be installed so the microenvironments can be read from a remote laptop in an office. Greenhouses are also the focus of a University of Guelph research proposal to the provincial ministry of agriculture, food, and rural affairs. Joseph Ackerman, associate dean of environmental sciences, is working with industrial partners to study algae propagation as potential biofuel. In this case, the greenhouses would in effect become photo bioreactors. “I think you can appreciate the fact that you can use wastewater streams (from plant production) and that algae grows quite nicely in greenhouses anyway,” said Ackerman, who anticipates such projects could be used in nurseries and golf courses too. The algae proposal is a somewhat-novel application of ecological and energy initiatives and reflects the whole ethos of reduced energy costs and good stewardship of the land. “One of the big issues in the horticulture industry is sustainability, the whole environmental movement,” says Dave Harrison, editor of Greenhouse Canada magazine. “I think greenhouses have always been incredibly environmentally aware and respectful.”