As part of the research activities within the Growing Knowledge Workgroup, Hochschule Osnabrück (HSO) undertook the construction of a climate controlled grow room and a separate mobile container farm to investigate light, temperature and nutrient interactions on plant performance using multiple flood-&-drain hydroponic systems.
The objective was not only to research the relationships between lighting, nutrients and environmental conditions on plant characteristics, but also provide a test environment for the evaluation various types of horticultural LED lighting and novel growth structures such as 3D plastic-matrix growing media.
A specific challenge for HSO was to make best use of the available space in both environments and this was achieved by splitting them into zones each with its own growth racks, closed-loop hydroponic system and supplementary lighting system.
Within each zone, HSO had the requirement to undertake multi-point environmental monitoring (CO2, relative humidity and temperature), irrigation control, nutrient monitoring (pH and EC) and lighting control (spectral intensity).
Due to its modular nature and high degree of configurability, CultinovaEDGE™ technology was used to undertake sensing and control functionality in both the grow room and container farm.
