"There is never an absolute magic bullet where you just press a button, and everything goes perfectly"
Source: HD.com
CO2 enrichment, lighting management, and the trade-offs of dynamic climate control "There is never an absolute magic bullet where you just press a button, and everything goes perfectly" Carbon dioxide enrichment and lighting are the final two variables in greenhouse climate control, and both have undergone substantial shifts in management. © MartinBergsma | Dreamstime CO2 enrichment: capture, storage, and coordination On the technology side, the established approach to CO2 enrichment is to capture flue gas from natural gas heating, then scrub it to remove harmful gases before injection into the growing environment.
Liquid CO2, vaporised and injected directly, offers an alternative. "A more potentially eco-friendly approach is direct air capture," Dodds says, "which extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then concentrates it for distribution in the greenhouse." Management of CO2 enrichment has become increasingly sophisticated.
"They use spectroscopic systems to measure infrared patterns affected by concentrations of carbon dioxide, and the benefit of that is it allows much more sensitive and precise monitoring of CO2 levels." Alongside this, horizontal airflow systems have enabled more targeted delivery. "Fans create a continuous gentle airflow around a greenhouse," he says, "which provides a more targeted, localised carbon dioxide enrichment." Lighting: passive technologies The lighting technology landscape divides into passive and active systems.
Why this matters: For operators, this is a water-management story. The useful signal is that direct substrate measurements can help cut drain loss materially without giving up yield or fruit quality, which is exactly the kind of controllable efficiency gain a facility can build on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does substrate sensing matter in free-drain strawberry systems?
Because drain percentage tells a grower what already happened, while substrate moisture and EC data show root-zone conditions directly. That makes it easier to cut water loss without guessing.
What is the operator takeaway from this trial?
If the thresholds are understood well enough, growers can reduce drain water materially while protecting yield and fruit quality, which makes sensing an operational tool instead of a reporting tool.
