Light to grow pot faster could help save world
U of A-developed system great for cannabis, but it could also benefit the food sector
The power of simulated sunlight is showing remarkable results in growing cannabis.
A high-tech lighting system that mimics the huge variety of sunlight — manufactured by Edmonton company G2V and developed in a University of Alberta lab by research scientist Michael Taschuk — is now being tested in four cannabis grow operations across Canada.
The results have been astonishing, so much so that this lighting system could have numerous beneficial applications for food and plant growing.
Travis George of Endless Sky cannabis in British Columbia has been testing high-end lighting systems for three years but found the G2V lights grow cannabis plants twice as fast. “It’s an Alberta-manufactured product that exceeds all other lighting on the market ... It kicked their asses.”
The significantly better G2V results were attained using just half the energy of other high-end lighting, George said.
The G2V lighting system wasn’t developed to grow plants. Instead it was built to test solar cells at the U of A’s National Institute of Nanotechnology.
The goal with solar cells is to get even slight increases in efficiency. This makes it necessary to have extremely precise diagnostic tools for taking measurements, including lamps that mimic the sunlight as it’s experienced on the Earth’s surface in all its variety, hot and cold, bright and dim, and everything in between.
“What I was trying to do was to develop an artificial sun, basically something you could switch and turn off and turn on,” Taschuk said.
Taschuk, 45, managed a large team of university research scientists, but he wanted to see if some of their work could have a real world application. Lab work just wasn’t cutting it.
As Taschuk’s GVS business partner Ryan Tucker, 30, who was part of the U of A team, puts it: “The (nanotech solar cell) science was amazing, it was thrilling, and I super enjoyed it but it just felt too far away from application.”
Taschuk started G2V in 2012 with the idea of using his solar simulating lighting system to grow plants. He was excited by all the possibilities. “It was clear there was so much more that could be done.”
Plants are highly sensitive to light and are able to detect time of day and time of year through it. “Because we have absolute control over the light and what the plant sees, we can manipulate the growth modes.”
Tucker likens the G2V lighting system to music, saying old lighting systems are like a horn on a train that blare out one loud note, while the G2V sun simulator is like a grand piano. “It is a grand piano where you can play songs to your plant. The effect of spectral combinations are those tunes. Different plants like different versions of those, so you can actually locate the one that is going to make your plant the happiest and grow, as compared to what’s basically an air horn that you can turn on, turn off, or make it louder or maybe a bit dimmer and that’s all you can do.”
All kinds of money is flowing into the cannabis industry, with many folks having a keen interest in growing the plants better, Tucker said.
Cannabis is a cash crop unlike any other so that will help this lighting system take off and find commercial success, but the real goal is to apply it to grow food and other plants.
“The amount of investment in agricultural technology, not just lighting, but software monitoring, nutrition and hydroponics has been so enormous because of (legalized cannabis) already that it undoubtedly will change the technology for large-scale controlled agriculture, the vertical farming of herbs, and that will have happened so much quicker because of this influx,” Tucker said.
For example, it’s extremely difficult to reforest damaged forests in cold, low-light climates, but G2V lights are now being used on seedlings to mimic the harsh conditions they’ll face when they’re planted, stressing them now but giving them a better chance of eventually surviving.
I’d long supported the legalization of cannabis so that the business could be taxed, the product could be regulated and made safer, and individual adults would have the right to smoke if they so desired.
It’s heartening, though, to see an unintended consequence of legalization could well be vastly superior growing technique for all kinds of food crops.
In other words, growing pot faster and cheaper could help save the world.
And that’s not just a pipe dream, that’s what is now unfolding with companies like G2V.