According to Tridge Intelligence, the worldwide lettuce market is 26.8M tonnes/y with the US producing 15.2% or 4M tonnes/y. Over 90% of US lettuce grown is in California. At the current $1.17/kg global wholesale lettuce price, the global wholesale lettuce market is worth $30B/y.
GROW believes that these initial chlorophyll trials with further replication of previous lettuce grow trials using its CO2 foliar spray technology will confirm the potential of 1-2 more lettuce crops/year in California or $1-2B/y more wholesale California lettuce revenue with less water use per unit of lettuce yield.
St. Cloud's first weekly plant science report states: "Notable in these initial experiments is the rapidity of physiological response seen in CO2 exposed plants. This data is encouraging and consistent with the hypothesis of significant plant growth enhancement with CO2 delivered via foliar spray".
In April 2018, GROW signed an ongoing Collaboration Agreement with St Cloud for scientific plant cultivation research services. Regular scientific documentation of CO2 foliar spray impacts on plant leaf stomata and now started grow trials in lettuce and peppers will be ongoing.
The primary objective of the started St. Cloud Romaine lettuce trial is to duplicate the excellent 100% incremental biomass results from an earlier lettuce trial conducted by the University of Guelph. That dissolved CO2 foliar spray lettuce biomass result was measured against lettuce grown with 800 PPM of CO2 gassing.