In Vertify's greenhouses at the World Horti Center in Naaldwijk, a very special trial is underway. Commissioned by BiomicAgritech, they are, in fact, growing tomatoes from top to bottom instead of the usual way, the other way round. How this works, with lifting, harvesting, and turning, is well illustrated in the video below.
The Israeli agritech company claims that labor savings of 50 percent can be achieved this way. For this, it cleverly uses gravity. The labor involved in lowering plants is no longer needed.
The striking trial was on display during the recent Crop Protection Days Vegetable Production.
Posts on LinkedIn suggest that upside-down cultivation has been experimented with before. "Demo trials with cherry tomatoes and vine tomatoes, which have recently ended, show higher productivity on the BiomicAgritech system than the traditional way, with half the labor." There is also a video showing a cucumber crop upside down in Israel.
Cucumber trial in Israel. At the end of planting, the grower's response was, "Do you know what it means to forget about the greenhouse until the first harvest instead of having a whole team working in the greenhouse every two days?"
As for sustainability, the Israeli claims the uprooted plants are "pure organic material" "that can be composted without plastic wires and accessories for tying up.
The company will be at GreenTech Amsterdam in stand 03.113SU.
For more information:
BiomicAgritech
Tel.: +972-54-6170172
biomimech@gmail.com
https://biomicagritech.wixsite.com/biomicagritech