Top stories from Produce Grower’s website

Understanding lavender’s potential

During a Monday session at Cultivate’21 in July, Peace Tree Farm’s Lloyd Traven went in depth on lavender, a perennial crop that has become more prominent in recent years. The session, which was unfortunately cut short due to a fire alarm at the Columbus Convention Center, featured Traven’s insight into a crop he and his team grow at Peace Tree.

“It has changed so much in the last decade,” Traven said. “It’s been an incredible evolution of the crop.” He later noted that, for big-box retailers, lavender has exceeded the 15% sales threshold and is now considered its own category in the broader perennial category.

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Nature Fresh Farms announces partnership with University of Windsor

Nature Fresh Farms has joined the University of Windsor “in their long-haul vehicle transportation sustainability project to help achieve new advancements in energy efficient shipping.”

The purpose of this $160,000 project is to determine the impact of long-haul electric vehicles (LHEV) on Ontario’s electric grid. They will create an archetypal routing network by determining the most frequently traveled routes and then overlay the electric grid which will help determine how it will perform when managing a fleet of electric trucks.

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Got your lighting dialed in? Get ready for ePAR

A fundamental change in how we define photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) is afoot, at least if you believe two researchers who presented at Cultivate’21 back in July in Columbus, Ohio.

Utah State University’s Dr. Bruce Bugbee discussed some intriguing findings at Cultivate’21 from ex-graduate student Dr. Shuyang Zhen, a former student of Bugbee’s who is now a researcher in Texas A&M’s ag program.

Her work was recently published in a prominent scientific research report in June 2021, arguing that far red photons should be included in the definition of photosynthetic photons, and that standards should be developed to quantify the amount of those photons being provided by horticultural lighting.

>> Read the full story here: bit.ly/3A0S8Uc