Growing small to trial leafy greens

Photos courtesy of Percival Scientific

Adding new varieties of leafy greens to your hydroponics operation or optimizing growth of greens you are currently growing can be a challenge. Trialing optimal conditions is more easily accomplished in small-scale test-runs.

How do plant growth chambers help trialing?

Plant growth chambers like Percival Scientific’s 41-series allows testing of NFT hydroponically grown crops and acts like a micro-greenhouse. Percival’s long history of innovation informs the cutting-edge technology behind their 41-series of refrigerator-sized growing chambers. The company developed its first chamber with a controlled environment for growing plants at the request of Iowa State University in the early 1950s. The modern chambers include the company’s innovative SciWhite or SciBright lighting systems and provide integrated lighting, temperature and airflow controls customizable to individual grower needs

“To start with the basics, understand the particulars of the instruments,” explains David Imberti, mathematical modeler and software developer at Percival Scientific. “Make sure everything’s well calibrated and understand where certain offsets come into play. Know what you are actually reading.”

What do growers need to know about setting up trials in plant growth chambers?

Imberti notes that the initial lighting, temperature, humidity and airflow parameters can be precisely dialed in, but growers who are trialing in smaller controlled environment chambers will need to be thoughtful about tuning the measurements.

For instance, no matter how lighting panels are configured in a chamber, there will always be areas of lower light. Additionally, lighting, temperature, humidity and airflow programs may need offset schedules to ensure uniformity.

What are the measurable outputs growers should consider?

Imberti notes that while growers might want to measure taste, it’s highly subjective. Instead, growers may want to focus on traits that indicate plant health and vitality to the consumer and value to the buyer.

“Consider the number of leaves, the actual shape and length of the leaves, the overall diameter of the plant and how dense it is,” says Imberti, who helped developed Percival Scientific’s phenotype imaging prototype software. But, he notes, there’s no need for high-tech tools when measuring outputs at the end of a trial. “Simply take the plants out of all the wells, get a ruler and start measuring. Given the space involved, it’s definitely feasible to do on a small scale.”

What are other uses for plant growth chambers?

Imberti says that beyond trialing plants, growers considering expanding can use growing chambers to understand how to develop new spaces. “We’ll have certain growers that will use the small-scale space to inform how their new spaces should be designed,” he says. “It ends up saving them quite a bit of cost when they actually go to the full-scale design. The lighting systems are a good example of that.”

In the end, whether focusing on plants or expansion of operations, Imberti reminds growers that manufacturers like Percival Scientific are there to help. “Growers are the experts,” he says. “You tell us what to do, and we’ll provide the best we can.”