KNOWLEDGE CENTER
CASE STUDIES
IMPROVING YIELD
Clear Top Indoor Cultivation Facility, San Diego, CA
One of Arvum Plant Labs, previously The Soil Labs, very first clients was looking to improve their yields. An onsite visit revealed a high tech cultivation facility with a talented, passionate team in place without any obvious areas of concern that needed to be addressed.
Arvum Plant Labs worked with the client to create a program that tested almost every plant touching input of the facility that included the following tests:
- Tissue Analysis
- Soil Analysis
- Water Testing (both well water and RO water)
- Nutrient Testing
- Run Off Testing
- Microbial Testing (bacterial, fungal and viral testing)
- Hop Latent Viroid Testing (HPLVD)
This testing program gave the client a baseline analysis of their entire cultivation facility and revealed several areas of improvement that lead to the following procedures being implemented:
- Water quality was inconsistent. More frequent RO Filter Maintenance was initiated to improve water quality consistency.
- Biofilm buildup in irrigation lines lead to an increase in bad bacteria in the growing medium. Adding enzymes when irrigating plants helped to reduce and eventually eliminate biofilm buildup in irrigation lines and eliminated bad bacteria in growing medium which improved overall plant health.
- HPLVD was identified in several cultivars. The client eliminated or worked to eliminate infected plants which lead to overall improvement of plant health.
The results were increased yields for the client across all cultivars. Ongoing bi-weekly tissue testing was implemented to ensure plant health was constantly being optimized for the client.
IMPROVING YIELD
Clear Top Indoor Cultivation Facility, San Diego, CA
One of Arvum Plant Labs, previously The Soil Labs, very first clients was looking to improve their yields. An onsite visit revealed a high tech cultivation facility with a talented, passionate team in place without any obvious areas of concern that needed to be addressed.
Arvum Plant Labs worked with the client to create a program that tested almost every plant touching input of the facility that included the following tests:
- Tissue Analysis
- Soil Analysis
- Water Testing (both well water and RO water)
- Nutrient Testing
- Run Off Testing
- Microbial Testing (bacterial, fungal and viral testing)
- Hop Latent Viroid Testing (HPLVD)
This testing program gave the client a baseline analysis of their entire cultivation facility and revealed several areas of improvement that lead to the following procedures being implemented:
- Water quality was inconsistent. More frequent RO Filter Maintenance was initiated to improve water quality consistency.
- Biofilm buildup in irrigation lines lead to an increase in bad bacteria in the growing medium. Adding enzymes when irrigating plants helped to reduce and eventually eliminate biofilm buildup in irrigation lines and eliminated bad bacteria in growing medium which improved overall plant health.
- HPLVD was identified in several cultivars. The client eliminated or worked to eliminate infected plants which lead to overall improvement of plant health.
The results were increased yields for the client across all cultivars. Ongoing bi-weekly tissue testing was implemented to ensure plant health was constantly being optimized for the client.
IMPROVING QUALITY
Newly Built Indoor Cultivation Facility, The Desert, Southern California
A client contacted Arvum Plant Labs, looking to improve their quality. An onsite visit revealed that this was a very well designed facility that had a near perfect indoor environment that was producing very high yields and high quality looking products. However, the customer was not satisfied with the quality, specifically, aroma and taste.
We started with an initial tissue sampling of various cultivars onsite in various stages of growth to begin to identify if any opportunities to improve quality might present themselves. What we found was Micronutrient levels were deficient in almost every stage of growth at the facility.
Working with the client, Arvum Plant Labs designed a program of bi-weekly testing and adding nutritional foliar applications to deliver increased levels of deficient micronutrients. This was an ideal solution for the client because foliar applications were a noninvasive method of correcting a specific issue without having to make significant changes to their existing programs or irrigation systems.
The results were almost immediate. Quality began to improve with almost every harvest. The increase in quality aligned with the improvement of micronutrient levels throughout the plant’s growth cycle. This led to an increase in the value of the harvested plants for the client.
COST REDUCING
High-Tech Supplemental Light Greenhouse, The Desert, California
A client contacted Arvum Plant Labs because they were interested in tissue analysis and what may be possible with the rapid test results and analytics that Arvum Plant Labs offers. An initial onsite visit and sampling started to reveal several opportunities for improvement.
What the tissue analysis revealed was that the client was feeding their plants a little too much every feeding. Together, we theorized that the client could reduce the amount of feedings slightly, and still maintain their current yield and quality.
A bi-weekly tissue testing program was developed for this client to monitor the nutrient levels of the plants to ensure appropriate nutrient levels were maintained while monitoring the final yield of the plants to ensure there was no loss of yield due to lowered levels of nutrients. Within a short amount of time, our theory was proven correct and resulted in a savings of approximately $5000/month on nutrients for the client.
SEEING SYMPTOMS BEFORE THEY MANIFEST
High-Tech Supplemental Light Greenhouse, Southern California
This client has been operating in a large scale, high tech greenhouse for a number of years and has begun to become highly successful, with high yields and high quality, however consistency has become an issue in recent years. The reason being inconsistent water quality due to aging infrastructure and sediment buildup in the well’s holding tank and distribution lines.
The inconsistent water quality led to various hard to diagnose nutrient toxicities that was degrading plant health, which lead to lower than desired yields and quality.
The customer contacted Arvum Plant Labs to trial tissue and soil testing in an effort to improve consistency.
What was very interesting was that once Arvum Plant Labs started scheduled testing, a set of results came in that showed very high Calcium levels in almost all plant tissues sampled, one at over 11% despite visually, the plants looking healthy. However, a few days later, all plants started to exhibit signs of nutrient toxicities.
We realized that this was an example of being able to see possible issues within the tissue tests, before the plants showed signs of stress physically! Both parties were very excited about the possibility of being able to get ahead of the problem, before they became a problem.
This led us to develop a weekly tissue testing program with rapid turnaround times, along with a water testing program that helps the client “get ahead” of any problems that may manifest.
MAKING BIG CHANGES QUICKLY
Large Converted Cut Flower Greenhouse, Santa Barbara, CA
A client in a distressed situation was looking to reduce costs as quickly as possible while attempting to mitigate the loss of quality or yield. This was a very challenging situation because when a facility as large as this is looking to make such drastic changes in an effort to reduce costs in order to continue operating, there is often a very steep learning curve to overcome.
For example, the customer wanted to completely overhaul their plant nutrient program along with their growing media and switch to a much more cost effective program, but was aware of the fact that doing so would require overcoming an initial learning curve that would most likely lead to decreased yields and quality, and reduced revenue, which might negate any cost savings switching programs would achieve.
Working with the client, Arvum Plant Labs designed an intense, weekly tissue testing program with rapid turnaround times for their test results, along with weekly conference calls to review test results and other data points collected onsite to ensure the plant nutrition levels were being optimized, almost in real time.
The results were a facility that made substantial changes to their nutrient and growing media programs, without having to experience a steep and expensive learning curve, and resulted in achieving their goal of reducing costs quickly, and being able to continue operating for the foreseeable future.
