Special Report: Roots Sustainable has wasted no time in securing its first commercial order in South Korea, just a few weeks after signing a distribution agreement with a major player.

The AU$22,500 order is for the company’s Roots Zone Temperature Optimization (RZTO) technology for use in hydroponic greenhouses.

In August, Roots (ASX:ROO) signed a reseller agreement with Korean farm tech business Ezfarm, an agricultural products distributor, to sell the RZTO technology into the South Korean market.

The order is for two RZTO systems, which will be used with ‘TapKit’, a nutrient film technique (NFT) greenhouse technology developed by Teshuva Agricultural Projects, a leader in greenhouse technology.

Dr Sharon Devir, Roots chief and co-founder, said the collaboration was an effective solution for South Korean farmers.

“Winters are too cold for normal agricultural growth, even in greenhouses. Summer temperatures during are often so hot that farmers cannot grow high quality leaves or vegetables in most parts of the country.”

“The combined NFT and RZTO technologies allows farmers to stabilise nutrient temperatures, increasing yields and profits through more efficient crop growing conditions.”

Roots has previously used its RZTO technology successfully alongside NFT technologies to cool hydroponically grown lettuce.

Despite ambient air temperatures in the greenhouse of nearly 40 degrees, the bare plant roots immersed at the nutrient fluid remained within favourable growing ranges more than 11 degrees lower.

This increased production quality and shortened the growing cycle by about 20 percent compared to NFT greenhouses where no nutrient temperature control is used.

Roots expects this deal to be the first of many larger orders, citing growing interest by Korean farming groups.

Dr Devir explained that until now, the only option South Korean farmers had to reduce heat in greenhouses was to use large evaporative cooling systems with several fans, which were expensive to buy and operate, used a lot of energy and increased humidity levels.

“RZTO cooling systems focus on retaining core temperatures at the root zone – not in the ambient air. Cooling the NFT nutrient solution utilises ground source heat exchange, which uses minimal energy.”

“South Korea is the sixth territory in which we’re commercialising our cutting-edge technologies to address critical problems faced by agriculture today, including plant climate management and the shortage of water for irrigation.”

“It represents a significant opportunity for Roots with a rise in specialist greenhouse crops, extreme weather conditions and small family-run farms.”

 

Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies is a Stockhead advertiser. 

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