THE RESEARCH CENTER

Background

Since 2017, Pipp Horticulture has been a leader in supplying vertical mobile racking systems for indoor cannabis cultivation, with over 4,500 installations to date. Based on customer feedback, we have learned that suboptimal airflow within the plant canopy is one of the greatest limiting factors to success for indoor vertical cannabis farms. Due to the lack of available research on the subject, even if the airflow within the canopy is quantified, there is a lack of understanding of the optimal air velocities to facilitate vigorous plant growth and health.

To fill this knowledge gap and support the growth of indoor vertical cannabis cultivation, Pipp Horticulture partnered with Dr. Allison Justice, a highly respected cannabis researcher, to conduct a series of airflow trials. The results of these novel airflow trials will be shared publicly and freely with the cannabis industry to further our understanding of indoor cannabis cultivation and support for the growth of indoor vertical cannabis farms.

SETTING THE STAGE

Experimental Design

Three R&D growth chambers and one drying room have been built at The Hemp Mine’s headquarters in Anderson, South Carolina. The grow rooms have been designed and engineered for precision control of all growth parameters to promote reliable data collection for validation of the experiments. One grow room will act as a control for the experiments, while the other two will be testing various airflow treatments. All the grow rooms will be operating simultaneously with plants of the same age, which will then be harvested at the same time and loaded into the drying room. Once in the drying room, optimal air velocities for the drying and curing of cannabis will also be studied. Dr. Justice and her team on site will be responsible for the cultivation of the plants and the collection of all data points.

TRIAL #1

Cannabis Airflow Research Trial

Trial #1 will study the effects of different air velocities on cannabis sativa yield, photosynthesis, and quality.

A large majority of cannabis sativa is grown indoors due to regulations, yield potential, product quality, and the ability to control environmental parameters. Researchers have investigated many aspects of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) with cannabis, including lighting, nutrition, etc. One facet that has yet to be investigated, specifically for cannabis, is air velocity. Suboptimal air velocity can alter gas diffusion within the leaf boundary layer and heat exchange between the leaves and the environment. This has the potential to decrease photosynthesis and transpiration which, in turn, can decrease yield and quality along with making the plant more susceptible to pests and pathogens. This study will investigate the effect of different air velocities on cannabis sativa yield, photosynthesis, and quality. Furthermore, this study aims to quantify the optimal air velocities for each growth phase (i.e., propagation, vegetative, flowering, and drying) under varying light intensities and different directionality (sub vs supra canopy).