An Ontario company is working to get precise prescriptions of carbon dioxide to greenhouse plants by creating a CO2-rich solution sprayed onto leaves.
Precisely managed plants in some greenhouses get a dose of carbon dioxide, pumped into the greenhouse air.
Why it matters: CO2 is important for plant growth in greenhouses but it can also result in increased emissions, something the sector wants to avoid.
Plants need carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and so it is one of the areas managed intensively in greenhouses, especially during colder seasons.
Read Also
Pigweed-specific herbicide makes jump to North American corn
Canadian growers are the first in North America to get approval for Convintro to control pigweeds, including glyphosate resistant strains.
Cstainable aims to optimize photosynthesis, says Dil Vishi, one of the founders of Cstainable. The company won the pitch competition at the recent Spark agriculture and food technology event put on by the Grand River Agricultural Society (GRAS) in Elora.
The problem with putting CO2 into the air comes in the summer months when sunshine heats up the greenhouses and hot air has to be vented into the surrounding environment. When that air is enriched with carbon dioxide, it increases the greenhouse gas emissions of the greenhouse sector. The greenhouse plants are also less productive with the loss of the CO2, and some of the CO2 created to be used in the greenhouse is lost, says Vishi.
Greenhouse operators can increase CO2 levels from 400 parts per million to 1,200 parts per million, which results in an increase of 30 per cent in product, he says. Losing that in the summer makes the greenhouses less productive.
“You have a situation where you have good temperature, good light, good water, good nutrients, but the plants are CO2 deficient.”
Cstainable’s process dissolves CO2 in water that’s then sprayed onto the leaves of the plants, resulting in more precise application and higher productivity.
It’s a precise process, and Vishi says the company is continuing to learn about how to perfect the application rate and it has software and algorithms to control application.
“It’s not just as simple as spraying CO2 water on plants. It’s about how much to apply, when to dose it, when the plant is actually primed for using it safely and, most importantly, effectively.”
He says the company can reduce the amount of CO2 used by about 95 per cent by precisely applying it to leaves versus pumping it into the greenhouse atmosphere.
When all of the major components of plant growth are optimized, like water, oxygen, sunlight and CO2, Vishi says the system can result in crop yield increases from 10 to 30 per cent depending on the plant.
Cstainable was founded in Ontario, but is already a global company, with partnerships with major greenhouse growers around the world, including Lipman Family Farms and Nature Fresh. The company is conducting research with the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre and the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. The company has had interest from Belgium and Kenya.
Partners in the company were in the gas infusion business for wastewater remediation and hospitals, and have brought their expertise and networks to the company.
Vishi says the technology works well in highly controlled greenhouses but can also work in other covered plant production systems.
