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.”