House and Garden How Good are They

House and Garden How Good are They : Ten years ago Dr. Louis Albright of Cornell University in upstate New York came up with a concept known as Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) which has revolutionized the production of fruits and vegetables throughout the developed world. Based on a hydroponic system known as the Nutrient Pond technique, CEA depends on greenhouses being built, especially in cold climates, which can produce fruits and vegetables year round.

CEA uses digital technology to control every element within the environment of the greenhouses, including the grow lights to supplement sunlight, plus the daytime and night time temperature, acceptable humidity, the CO2 content of the air, and the amount of each macro and micro nutrient necessary to grow healthy, robust fruits and vegetables. The Cornell experiments started off using High Intensity Discharge (HID) grow lights, but its successors are now experimenting with Light Emitting Diodes (LED) grow lights, in order to save energy.

The great advantage of producing fruits and vegetables by this method can be summed up with one statistic-while a California field grower can harvest 45 tons of crop per acre per year, greenhouses using CEA are able to produce 390 tons an acre per year.