Idromeccanica Lucchini is always looking for new procedures to improve greenhouse cultivation systems and has recently perfected an innovative method that brings many benefits to the cultivation of horticultural products: the Floating System.
Designed to obtain an excellent quality fruit and vegetable product, the Floating System allows you to control all the parameters concerning sowing / transplanting, cultivation and harvesting in an environment that is constantly monitored, uncontaminated and independent of the weather variations which, on the contrary, in the open field, could negatively affect the yields and quality of fruit and vegetables.
What is the Floating System
The Floating System is a type of cultivation that takes place in a vertical-wall greenhouse: an environment that allows a great capacity for movement for the operators. The water used by this innovative cultivation system is controlled by highly technological systems that control the flow of water and nutrients and constantly guarantee their quality and purity. Thanks to the constant supply, water and nutrients are absorbed by the plants as needed, without the occurrence of leaching and dispersion phenomena typical of the open field.
A floating crop
Within greenhouses of Idromeccanica Lucchini portfolio, the Floating System involves the use of waterproof tanks coated with plastic material. The tanks are filled with a nutrient solution complete with macro and micronutrients and constantly oxygenated by intermittent recirculation. Floating supports are placed inside the tanks to grow crops. These are honeycomb containers, in which the sowing or transplanting of the seedlings is carried out, which here can grow and thrive in a completely protected environment. The seedlings can thus absorb all the nourishing elements through the porosity of the floating supports exclusively according to their needs. Furthermore, to ensure the optimal functionality of the systems,
Economical and efficient
The Floating System has low construction and management costs thanks to the limited presence of automatic control tools for correcting the nutrient solution and thanks to the reduction of labour costs. The only control necessary during the whole cycle of vegetable cultivation concerns the quantity of oxygen in the water, which must remain on values close to 5/7 mg / lt. The simple and economical oxygenation system allows the circulation of part of the nutrient solution through a pipe into which air sucked from the outside is pumped through a Venturi tube. The air flow is gently conveyed so as not to damage the delicate root systems of the seedlings.
The Floating System revolution and the challenge of Idromeccanica Lucchini
The Floating System represents a particularly suitable system for IV range products (fresh, washed, cut and packaged fruit and vegetables in great demand on the market), as it ensures high production levels and good quality characteristics, but also represents a great opportunity for floriculture and , in particular, for the cultivation of bulbous flowering plants.
The challenge for the future, exclusive to Idromeccanica Lucchini, will be to further innovate the Floating System, developing new greenhouses, specific for this type of crop, which are able to modulate and rationally integrate the external environmental parameters. In this way, the foundations can be laid to develop and apply, also in aquaponics, a sort of innovative concept of water terroir unique in the world. The substantial practical implication will be to obtain water with the maximum characteristics of potability and healthiness, for the exclusive benefit of the final consumer and respect for the environment. An enormously innovative aspect will be that of being able to recreate specific productions anywhere in a given territory and defined by the use of waters with strong physical and chemical characteristics (e.g. sulphurous waters rich in carbonates, silicon, magnesium, etc.). In fact, in the greenhouse it will be possible to recreate the typical environment and waters of any type of area or territory and, consequently, to obtain the specific characteristics sought in a specific horticultural product.
All this represents a real mission for Idromeccanica Lucchini which, unique and before any other competitor, is trying its hand at a system of great innovation for cultivation.
