Want to grow the best plants? Want to know every last data detail of your growing environment? Well, you can. With horticulture sensors. The most efficient way of managing your plants so you can achieve impressive yields and optimised results.
The best part of using sensors for horticulture is that they can help you to work out what’s working or not working in your growing environment. And you can use the data they provide to constantly refine and tweak your growing conditions so your plants thrive.
Sensors can be used in a variety of different ways and areas to provide you with a clear picture of your growing environment. You can install them in the root zone where they can capture data about the oxygen levels, root zone moisture, temperature, and nutrients. The data can then be used to help you fine tune these levels so your plants are healthier, and so you can reduce the risk of unexpected problems or abnormalities.
You can also install sensors in the air zone where they offer you insights into light, humidity, airspeed, temperature, and CO2. Understanding all these measurements provides consistent feedback so growers can tangibly increase grow quality, yield and capability.
So, without further delay, let’s dig deep into horticulture sensors…
Where can you use horticulture sensors?
Horticulture sensors can be used in a variety of different environments as they are adaptable and capable of providing extensive data from all sorts of locations and situations. The most common include:
Vertical Farms and Containers
Horticulture sensors are immensely valuable for vertical farms. The data provided by sensors sitting in the air and root zones can be collated to provide growers with a complete picture of environmental conditions. You can use the data to refine each element individually for ongoing plant and space optimisation. This is particularly relevant for these types of grow spaces as the operating costs can be higher than with other grow methods so the data can be used to save money and increase yield.
Greenhouses
Like vertical farms, greenhouses also benefit from horticulture sensors in that they can help you to refine light, air speed and moisture on a granular level. It allows for you to adapt your unique conditions to suit plant requirements with far more agility. As greenhouses are larger environments, different parts can have different micro-climates. You can use the sensor data to micro-manage these environments, adjusting the environment to grow more crops or reduce risks.
Polytunnels
Due to their unique design and requirements, polytunnel users can benefit hugely from the data offered up by horticulture sensors. You can use the information across every part of the environment to holistically adapt conditions for optimal yield and to reduce risks as you have a clear understanding of what’s going on in this environment. You can use the sensor data combined with macro data, such as weather patterns, to forecast impact on the microenvironment in the polytunnel and take a proactive approach to your crop management.
Outdoors
While many of the factors that influence plant yield and health in the outdoors cannot be controlled as tightly as in greenhouses or other grow environments, there is still room for you to adapt certain parameters. Horticulture sensors provide superb visibility into the environment and allow for improved management of plants, measure greenhouse gas emissions, soil quality and more. Having a better understanding of larger areas thanks to in-depth data, you can experience huge commercial gains with measurable percentage increases in yield.
Why are horticulture sensors important?
The data provided by horticulture sensors is another arrow in your bow. It allows for growers across multiple environments, plant types, geographies, and spaces to customise and optimise grow conditions effectively.
The insights offered by horticulture sensors help you to paint a picture of your grow environment. You can use this to plan ahead, to refine your processes and to ultimately optimise plant growth intelligently – using measurable data that has measurable results.
This data can also be used to refine performance in real time. To assess your grow environment as it stands, right now, and then use the information to address any issues or concerns that may be affecting how well your plants are doing.
Finally, the data can be used to reduce risks. You can prevent potential issues as you will be able to identify worrying trends or areas that may be of concern before they impact your plants or your yield.
What are the benefits of horticulture sensors?
Horticulture sensors can be used to automatically adapt conditions to ensure the optimal results are achieved. They can be used to measure airspeed and CO2 – both critical for greenhouses to ensure good air quality – temperature, humidity, light, moisture, nutrients and so much more. They offer up intelligent insights so you can undertake real-time environment management of your environments for consistent growth optimisation.
Some of the biggest benefits of horticulture sensors are:
01: Cost savings because you can optimise these elements to reduce waste, transform energy usage and optimise your grow spaces and resources properly.
02: Achieve plant optimisation. Such in-depth insights into the quality and health of plants offer growers the ability to reduce waste, catch abnormalities or issues early, and minimise risks around temperature fluctuations or soil nutrient loss.
03: Create the perfect environment with horticulture sensor data because you can constantly measure temperature, humidity, air quality and more. You can then use analytics to translate this data into accessible insights.
With horticulture sensors you can transform your environments, plant health, yield and success rates. You can tap into the data, analyse it in real time, and use the information to ensure you have the right systems in place.
In collaboration with academic experts from Nottingham Trent University, Light Science Technologies has developed an all-in-one indoor horticulture sensor that’s capable of monitoring key areas across all these different types of environment – from containers to polytunnels to vertical farms and beyond. With the Light Science Technologies sensorGROW, you will be able to track light, water, air, temperature, humidity, oxygen, root zone moisture and nutrient levels with ease. This sensor provides information that can anticipate changes to the growing environment and minimise the impact of adverse events, providing you with the ability to create an optimal growing environment and maximise plant productivity and yield.
