The Digital Crop Protection Breakthrough
The ubiquitous LED has redefined our relationship with work and play, and things like entertainment, transportation and medicine—in its teeny tiny way. Indeed, the LED stands with just a handful of other breakthroughs doing the most to reduce our consumption of electricity and ultimately our global reliance on fossil fuels. It should be no surprise that this uniquely digital tool would find its way into agriculture.
Fast forward through a few hundred million dollars in product development overcoming the near impossible task of packaging an LED whose energy wavelength is absorbed by literally everything and you are up to date!
The good news is that, as a greenhouse or indoor grower struggling with all the nasties that mother nature is serving up, you haven’t missed much. The breakthrough that enabled the practical delivery of UVC light energy via semiconductor material wasn’t commercially viable for agriculture until literally 2024. Such a revelation might suggest it’s time to wait until the technology was proven, except for the fact that it has been studied for decades, resulting in dozens of peer reviewed scientific studies showing the promise of this chemical-free tool for crop protection. You see, UVC light energy has been used to fight pest and disease for over 100 years, but the mercury-based glass tubes used up until today are hazardous and difficult to apply at scale, especially in agriculture. Today, that’s all changed.
How it Works
Kill Mechanism: The ultra-short wave length of UVC, especially between 263nm and 268nm, penetrates the thin cell structure of microbes and stops the replication of DNA and thus the spread of pest and disease. The required dosage is specific to the target. For instance, an intensity that may be safe for humans to work around for short periods, might neutralize a fungus spore in less than a second but require several minutes to kill thrip larvae. And of course, too much exposure can damage the crop. As one would expect, like any crop protection tool, the proper set up and application is important. That’s where we enter the picture. Radiare Technologies is pioneering precision delivery methods, dose management, data acquisition and safeguards to avoid overexposure. 
Boosting Natural Defenses: It’s not all about the kill. Short exposure to UVC energy in young plants has proven to trigger the plants natural defenses and reduce the effects of disease outbreak by 20% to 30%--a phenomenon referred to as upregulation. Numerous studies across plant species are nearly unanimous in their findings. These studies suggest that the overall efficacy of UVC in agriculture is a combination of upregulating genetic response to disease and reducing the disease pressure itself.
Reduce Disease Pressure with Cleaner Air: If growers are familiar with UVC today, it is generally via the use of lamps mounted inside HVAC equipment to reduce mold and mildew accumulation in coils and pans. Although some companies market air cleaning via UVC mounted in air ducts, few of these products have proven effective given the speed with which the air passes the light sources. As ASHRAE sponsored studies have proven, the far more effective deployment of UVC in pursuit of clean air is to directly expose room air to UVC. This technique referred to as “Upper Room Disinfection” has been proven to be many times more effective per dollar than even sophisticated filtration in reducing airborne pathogens. In a greenhouse application with few practical filtration options, directing a half watt per square foot of UVC into the ceiling cavity can dramatically reduce the amount of unwanted airborne biology.
How Does UVC Stack Up?
The promise of chemical free crop protection has inspired many governments and private institutions around the world to invest in studying UVC in agriculture, nearly all of them using mercury filled lamps in impossible contraptions. Still, we are all grateful for the work that was done. One of the more important studies published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology compared the results of many known chemical treatments alongside UVC in a multi-cycle 5 week controlled study. The results were conclusive. UVC performed better than many traditional chemical treatments leaving the plant with no side effects. Fortunately, Radiare’s technology allows for cost effective delivery of the dosage referenced in the study without the need for a worker to manually manipulate a lamp around the plants every day.
Scott, C., & Punja, Z. K. (2020). Evaluation of disease management approaches for powdery mildew on Cannabis sativa L. (marijuana) plants. Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology, 43(3), 394–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/07060661.2020.1836026 SUMMARY OF RESULTS
Return on Investment:
Most growers know the math. Those cycles spared by serious outbreak with few treatments deliver gorgeous product and more of it. All else equal, this product tends to fetch a healthy premium and even cost less to produce. Consistently producing pristine product has the added benefit of building brand value as your customers begin to trust your work.
Unfortunately, pest and disease pressure is nearly always present and keeping it at bay costs money in treatment and every spray application takes something away from the harvest, either in quality or quantity. Where indoor growers have a fighting chance, no one is spared as diseases get tougher and spread further. Greenhouse growers in most parts of the country have an even tougher time of it. Simple payback calculations in even low pressure applications show UVC Air/Plant/Surface deployments pay for themselves in less than a year! This is more than 100% ROI.