With the help of various tricks, mankind has been trying for thousands of years to increase the productivity of various crops, and once again has achieved an impressive breakthrough in this area.
The new experimental farm is housed in a former Sony factory, the size of half a football field, and is completely isolated from the outside for better control of humidity, temperature and lighting inside. All of these metrics are important for growth, but lighting is key.
Experimenting with different options, the farm workers figured out which settings can trick the biological clock of lettuce and make it grow much faster. For this, the sequence of day and night changes was accelerated, as well as the ideal lighting parameters for the "day" time of the day were selected.
Special diodes manufactured by GE are used as light sources, which work 40% more efficiently than fluorescent lamps. The total number of diode lamps is 17.5 thousand and they serve 18 plant shelves, each of which consists of 15 micro-floors.
Photo: itc.ua
The combination of the right lighting parameters, as well as the compact use of space, can increase the yield of lettuce from the same area by 100 times compared to traditional crop cultivation in an open space. And moisture control and an optimized irrigation system reduce water use by up to 1% compared to conventional fields.
The greatest contribution comes from the use of several tiers, but the real achievement of the new farming was the use of controlled diode lighting, which accelerated the growth rate by 2.5 times, which allows you to get 10 thousand bundles of lettuce daily. Isolation of the farm from the external environment also played a positive role, so that yields ceased to depend on bad weather and pests. This made it possible to reduce losses from 50% to 10%.
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Photo: itc.ua
Photo: itc.ua