Serre Red, the new state-of-the-art, fully electric ‘quarantine’ greenhouse at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands, has adopted Fluence by OSRAM’s broad-spectrum LED lighting for the facility, which conducts work of critical global importance into diseases affecting protected crops – ‘fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasitic nematodes, including quarantine pathogens, as well as research on genetically modified organisms’, explains a recent article in Horti Daily.
Wageningen’s science team selected the Fluence solution over three others thanks to its high, naturalistic and even illumination, regarded as optimal for the university’s new experimental facility.
LED over HPS
To reduce the influence of artificial light on their experiments, WUR’s researchers swapped from their usual HPS to broad spectrum LEDs. Unifarm, the university’s greenhouse and field research facility, chose Fluence in April out of four potential manufacturers whose potential solutions had been examined by WUR’s scientific committee.
“As we want to eliminate any influences that artificial lighting could have on experiments, we looked for a solution that came closest to the spectrum that our scientific team specified as optimal,” Dolf Straathof, head of Unifarm, told Horti Daily.
“Fluence … proposed higher light levels than we initially specified, which concurred with recommendations from our researchers,” Straathof said. “The PhysioSpec solution that Fluence proposed also fit our spectral requirements … [and offered] the highest uniformity for a mix of low and tall crops throughout all compartments.”
Serre Red: the details
The high-tech greenhouse, built by Bosman van Zaal, is one of the most advanced quarantine research facilities constructed in the world to date. Each of its 63 compartments has individually controllable lighting, climate control, air filtering and access locks; the extensive technical equipment is housed in a subterranean corridor to avoid shading plants.
Other features: insulated double glazing, external shading, heat/cold storage – and autoclaving to sterilise everything, including water and waste, before it leaves the greenhouse.
Source: Serre Red: new quarantine greenhouse in the Netherlands I Horti Daily