On an acreage of 5 hectares, Ludovic and Patricia Rat grow strawberries. Experimenting and innovating are in their nature - if it is for the use of Integrated Pest Management that Patricia adopted, or the way Ludovic first learned himself to grow tomatoes before making the switch to strawberries, a product of which he highly favours the local production and has been continuously looking for ways to improve the quality of the crop and the fruits. Their newest adaption is the use of LED lights on their strawberry crop - another step in combining their ambition for a clean cultivation with modern techniques and of course their joie de vivre.
Experimenting with dynamic spectrum
"Traditional lighting limited us in our ambition of growing: we wanted to harvest earlier and achieve a better yield and quality. That's why we've started experimenting with dynamic spectrum LEDs", Ludovic says. Partnering with the French company RED, Rouge Engineered Designs, has led to a collaboration in which the lighting and crop management was reviewed and optimized.
The lights in the greenhouse have been replaced by the TaurusPro luminaires and the whole system is regulated through Solstice. During the crop cycle, the Solstice control system adapts the intensity and spectrum of the lights in real time, depending on the climatic circumstances and the light strategies established by the company.
"It means that throughout the season the crop is lighted with the intensity and spectrum we've agreed upon with the growers, no matter what the outdoor circumstances are", Yassine El Qomri, commercial director with RED explains. "The Solstice control system uses sensors and software to calculate what light output is needed in all circumstances."
Dynamic light recipe
The dynamic light recipe proposed by RED's photobiology team was agreed upon by the growers. "We talk a lot about the crop and try to improve together", Ludovic says. "I'll give my impressions of the crop and then the team adjusts the spectrum to improve the whole system."
Yassine adds: "We've developed a first recipe based upon the initial objectives and perfected it following the field observations by Ludovic and Patricia. For example, they showed us how we needed to adapt the spectrum to favour the flowering stage during the end of the vegetative development of the plants. Our evolutive LED proved to be the ideal tool to achieve their goals: from the seedling stage through to the harvesting of the fruits."
In the end it surprised even Ludovic and Patricia that they were able to harvest the fruits three weeks earlier than their normal schedule. "They've proven to be of higher quality and the plants developed quicker. It resulted in a 25% higher yield as well", they show. "Coaching and teamwork is everything. Our collaboration made it possible to offer the market a higher quality product from an earlier moment in the season."
For more information on SOLSTICE and TAURUS:
Rouge Engineered Designs
hugo.wirth@horticulture.red
www.horticulture.red