Students do a trial in radishes in Vertical Farming
In the LED container of our location in Naaldwijk, a group of 2nd year students from Inholland Delft who are doing the Horticulture and Agribusiness HBO course are conducting research in the context of 'Fieldlab Vertical Farming'.
In the LED container of our location in Naaldwijk, a group of 2nd year students from Inholland Delft who are doing the Horticulture and Agribusiness HBO course are conducting research in the context of 'Fieldlab Vertical Farming'. In the second year, students of this program can specialize in Business or Cultivation. The group of students doing the trial with us has opted for Cultivation. For this specialization they could choose from 6 tests. For this they registered individually and the group was created. Daphne says: 'The trial we are doing is growing radishes in Vertical Farming. This does not exist yet and are therefore the first to do this. There's a lot involved. “We focused on temperature, light intensity and especially the substrates. We are the very first to conduct tests in radishes in vertical farming,' Matthijs adds.
The group is currently working on the second crop. In the first cultivation trial, a harvestable radish had grown in 18 days, while plants sown in the greenhouse on the same day needed a few more weeks. That is a nice result. However, it still requires too much energy and the shape could be even better. The students work on this in the second test.
Supervision is provided by Sjoerd van Marrewijk and Matthijs Blind of Vertify, grower Erik de Jong of radish wholesaler JongFresh BV from Monster and teacher Frank van der Helm.
When asked how they think it is, Daphne and Matthijs shout: 'Challenging! We have to make a lot of time for it, but if it works, we are willing to give it. Sometimes one week works better than the other week but we just keep going. It's a lot of fun to do.'.
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