Engineering and Science Based Solutions for Northern Food Security through the Development of a Northern Greenhouse

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One of the great challenges for northern Canada is food security. A key finding of a report by the Council of Canadian Academies (2014) was the importance of lived, northern experience and traditional knowledge in defining and addressing the issues surrounding food security. In southern regions, this can be accomplished using traditional agriculture and temperate climate greenhouse systems. However, in more northern locations, traditional field based agriculture is very challenging if not impossible, and temperate climate greenhouses have limited range. This research program will build on the expertise of Dr. Lefsrud to address this challenge by combining his established expertise in controlled-climate greenhouses, controlled environments, biomass heating systems, LED horticultural lighting and novel plant production systems. This research will combine engineering approaches with improved plant production and monitoring technologies to bridge the gap from southern agriculture production to food sovereign northern communities. ******This Discovery Grant research will fund research on existing and building expertise in our laboratory focused on 1) LED use for horticultural plant production, 2) Biomass heating and carbon dioxide enrichment for plants, 3) Hydroponic tower nutrient delivery system, and 4) Monitoring and control systems for hydroponics. Each of these fundamental projects are standalone and consist of both engineering and plant science aspects. Combined this expertise will be used to improve our prototype Canadian Integrated Northern Greenhouse (CING) as a test bed for suitable northern agriculture technology, these projects will be used to develop a novel northern greenhouse solution that can be used to solve many of the existing science and engineering challenges faced by northern communities in the supply of fresh vegetables. This program will focus on a design that integrates each of these technologies to provide light, heat, CO2, water irrigation, nutrient delivery and control for a northern protected agriculture system. Testing and optimizing of individual components will occur before integration into the CING. Two critical needs that make northern greenhouse design challenging are heat and light which will be addressed by optimizing and combining our biomass heating system with our research on LED light management. Specifically, we have set a goal of using no more than 30 amps of power from a 220V power supply to operate the full greenhouse system including all the factors listed above. This limitation will lead to significant optimization of the system and determination of critical component analysis and critical failure points. For example, at temperatures below -40 C, energy required to maintain the environment will limit the lighting available. Understanding these limitations and synergies will be critical to optimizing the proposed system.