b'CLIMATE SMART COMPANIES Harvest TodayWinnipeg, Man.Saving Land for the Right CropsSustainable crop growth can be hindered by seasonal and climate changes, water and nutrients, which also affects food production that results in growing only during certain times of the year. A simple indoor grow-ing system can solve this problem to increase crop growth and food production.Harvest Today has designed the harvest wall, and it has the ability to change the world by allowing people ViventCalgary, Alta. to grow produce easily in their communities while reserving valuable acres for field crops. Helping Plant Researchers Breed for Harvest Todays grow walls start with a tile that has Drought Tolerance six grow ports. A modular design allows for scaling to 720 plants on 16 square feet of floor space. The walls Vivent is a Swiss deep tech company founded in 2012are standalone units or can be linked together for a whose operations have spread around the globe, includ- commercial application. They use only a 24-volt pump ing to Canadafounder and CEO Carrol Plummer isthat pumps the water up to the top and then the water originally from Alberta.simply cascades down the back, watering the plants Vivent investigates and develops applications linkedthat are in peat cups on the way down and then recol-to naturally occurring bioelectrical signals in people andlects in the basin. plants. It has developed plant electrophysiology sensorsThe nesting features for shipping allow for 80 full-that monitor plants in real time.sized harvest walls to fit in a 40-foot shipping container. Thanks to advances in electronics and the applicationWith the ability to form controlled environment agricul-of machine learning, Vivent has been able to monitorture hubs in small communities anywhere in the world, plants in their environment and can now provide infor- it will drastically change the landscape of how people mation to growers on their responses to environmentalare able to source their food, says William Aitken, changes and especially to biotic and abiotic stressorsdirector of Harvest Todays Canadian operations. (pests, water and nutrient deficits).Leafy greens and other plants can be grown in With Vivents technology, indoor and outdoor grow- a controlled environment setting, even better than ers now have an early warning system that alerts themoutside, using our product. Thats because we still use to problems with their crops before visible symptomsa grow medium that allows the plants to establish the appear. Growers use Vivent sensors to work out theproper microbiomes they need to be a healthy plant. optimum temperature and lighting for their greenhouses.The grow mediums we incorporate into the use of the Customers use the sensors to test different crop varietieswall make it so the water uses less power and evapo-resistance to water stress, as this is becoming increas- rates less than other traditional indoor growing meth-ingly important for the development of drought resistanceods, he says.cultivars worldwide.This allows us to have a definite advantage when it Vivent sees this as a way to help growers and cropcomes to changing the world with a real solution.researchers be more climate-smart; they have installed real-time crop sensors at Ontarios North American Horticultural Technology Centre & Academy in the heart of the biggest greenhouse production cluster in North America.Traditionally, agriculture has been focused on maxi-mum production, and I think humans have got some pretty good ideas on what plants want or need, says Norm Janssen, Vivents business development specialist based in Calgary. But we have so much more to learn about plants. The world is still trying to sort out human nutrition, never mind crop nutrition. He adds that researchers will hopefully learn how to reduce crop stress within a few minutes of it occurring using Vivents technology.14GERMINATION.CANOVEMBER 2022'