Japan: Year-round bell peppers from Hokkaido

On February 20th, a ceremony took place to mark the first shipments from the bell pepper greenhouse operated by Saladpaprika in the Hokkaido city of Kushiro, Japan. The greenhouse will maintain fresh, safe and secure supplies of domestically grown bell peppers for a Japanese market that is reliant on imports for roughly 90% of the peppers it consumes. Therefore, operations like this are of major importance to the local industry and receive much attention even from government officials.

For the construction of the brand new greenhouse at Saladpaprika, Dutch greenhouses were taken as a benchmark. This is due to the fact that Dutch greenhouses are perceived in Japan to be the most suitable for growing vegetables in a climate that is similar to the Japanese region of Hokkaido.

BLV Horturion high pressure sodium lamps (HPS) have been chosen as lighting sources. “The productivity in our HPS growing areas has exceeded all expectations. So much that we are planning to install lamps in all other areas in the future. We believe in the great potential by growing bell peppers with additional light”, says Yutaka Kobayashi, President of Hokkaido Saladpaprika Co.

Salad Garden uses the BLV power supply together with the 1000 W BLV HPS lamp to increase and optimise their bell pepper yield. “The 1000 W HPS lamp was chosen because it has the highest light output (2100 µmol s^-1), as well because of its stability throughout the entire life time of the lamp - thanks to the BLV Horturion triple capacitor technology”, explains Joas van Iperen, Director Sales Horticulture Business.

BLV lighting is used in the bell pepper nursery area and in propagation and production, covering nearly 5000 square meters. The light intensity in the propagation and production area was set to 70 µmol s^-1 m-² (at crop level). To better control light intensities two individual power lines were installed. In this way, light levels can be reduced by 50 %.

For more information:
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www.blv-licht.de