Key Takeaways:
- Collaborative Insight: The GLASE Summit gathers key players from various sectors, such as growers, manufacturers, researchers, and efficiency professionals, to tackle greenhouse resilience and profitability.
- Cross-Border Expertise: This is GLASE’s first event in Canada, aiming to “cross-pollinate” expertise across North American borders and promote international collaboration in the greenhouse industry.
- Spotlight on Innovation: Sollum Technologies, an anchor partner and member of GLASE, showcases pioneering LED grow light solutions, highlighting real-time automatic dimming of light intensity and spectrum.
- Focused Themes: The two-day event explores intricate themes around energy problems, greenhouse industry statuses, and evolving research, with prominent speakers like Dr. Bruce Bugbee and Gretchen Schimelpfenig.
- Networking and Exploration: Besides intellectual discourse, the summit offers participants unique opportunities like a winery tour, tasting, and exclusive greenhouse tours, enabling experiential learning and networking.
In the quaint locale of Leamington, Ontario, a confluence of minds invested in the future of greenhouse industries will illuminate pathways toward resilience and profitability in controlled environment agriculture (CEA). The Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium orchestrates a gathering that promises to be a hub of knowledge exchange and an arena to explore tangible, sustainable solutions from October 25 to 26, 2023.
Diverse Participation Enhancing Holistic Understanding
A spectrum of professionals—growers, manufacturers, researchers, and efficiency experts—from across North America are descending upon Leamington to carve out viable strategies for navigating the ever-evolving challenges and emerging opportunities within the greenhouse industry. Amidst challenges such as fluctuating energy prices and climatic variables, these diverse participants will collectively explore practical and innovative strategies to ensure the longevity and profitability of greenhouse operations.
Navigating the Energy Dilemma
The summit’s theme accentuating greenhouse resilience sharply highlights the necessity of agile, innovative solutions to address the complex energy challenges sprawled across the CEA industry. As Evelyn Lundhild and Jason Kwok from IESO delve into energy prices and future expectations for CEA, a discourse is anticipated that threads through the intricacies of balancing cost-efficiency, sustainability, and operational efficacy in an industry heavily reliant on energy.
A Glimpse into Innovative Lighting Solutions
Sollum Technologies, revered for its innovative LED grow light solutions, occupies a pivotal space in this discourse. With their intelligent, user-friendly LED lights capable of automatically dimming light intensity and spectrum in real-time, they underscore the intersectionality of technology, innovation, and sustainability. The technology they bring into the limelight at the GLASE Summit speaks volumes about the potential trajectories of combining scientific innovation with practical applications in enhancing greenhouse operations.
Integrative Approach Towards Knowledge and Practice
GLASE, established in 2017, has anchored its roots deeply into the soil of marrying academic research and education with practical industry expertise. The consortium continuously breaches the gaps between theory and practice by mobilizing research in LED systems engineering, plant photobiology, physiology, and greenhouse environmental controls toward commercially viable applications.
The delineation of the state of the Leamington Greenhouse Industry by Jim DiMenna from Red Sun Farms and insights into the Harrow Research Center by Fadi Al-Daoud from Agri-Food Canada further stitch together a coherent narrative of integrating research, technology, and industry practices.
Bridging Borders in Greenhouse Expertise
Hosting its first event in Canada, GLASE seeks to stitch a tapestry of knowledge and expertise that transcends geographical borders. The summit intends to sow seeds that will germinate into cross-border collaborations, thereby enhancing the collective capacity to navigate through the quirks and challenges unique to each geographical location. The collective wisdom from such collaborations could pave the way toward a sustainable future in greenhouse operations across North America.
The Path Ahead
The GLASE Summit, beyond its explicit agenda, silently curates a future where the synergy between research, technology, and practical application is not just an aspiration but a tangible reality. As participants immerse themselves in keynote addresses, interactive sessions, and experiential tours, the echo of collaborative, sustainable, and resilient futures in greenhouse operations will undeniably reverberate across the North American greenhouse industry.
As the doors close on October 26, the learnings, collaborations, and innovations spawned within the summit’s walls will cast a long shadow, heralding a future where the greenhouse industry is not just surviving but thriving sustainably amidst adversities.
Photo by Daniel Fazio on Unsplash