17 Reasons To Use UbiGro In Your Greenhouse

Hey greenhouse growers, builders, and designers! Today’s article is all about the ‘why.’ Why use UbiGro, the industry’s only greenhouse film that utilizes quantum dots to shift the color of sunlight? Understanding these reasons can positively impact the profitability, efficiency, sustainability of your greenhouse operations, enhance plant growth, increase crop yield enhancement, and offer sustainable farming solutions.

1. Optimize Sunlight

The UbiGro greenhouse film optimizes your sunlight with red-shifting quantum dots that are efficient in manipulating colors of light. Read more about the benefits of red-shifting sunlight for crop growth in our White Paper.

2. Make Use Of Underutilized Colors Of Sunlight

Blue light makes up about 30% of sunlight, but that’s more than is needed for most crops. UV light does not contribute to photosynthesis at all. So, passively red-shifting these underutilized portions of sunlight improves the solar spectrum’s efficiency when driving crop yields.

3. Boost Crop Yields

By increasing photosynthetic efficiency and radiation capture, the application of UbiGro results in heavier crops for the same sunlight exposure. Check out our Case Studies for specific examples of these yield enhancements.

4. Hasten Crop Cycle Times With Faster Growth Rates

Sometimes yield isn’t the driving metric for a grower; cycle time is the motivating metric, especially for crops such as ornamentals, potted plants, herbs, and leafy greens. UbiGro has shown faster and fuller flowering in floriculture and a faster time to maturity in leafy greens.

5. Evenly Distribute Light By Diffusion

A secondary benefit of UbiGro is the light diffusion it applies to the incoming sunlight, spreading light evenly throughout the canopy, leading to better light penetration and full-canopy production.

6. Improve Revenues And Profits

Harvesting larger yields or harvesting more frequently while using the same amount of electricity significantly impacts profitability. Payback times for UbiGro are in the 1-2 year range for high-value veggies and in the 1-2 harvest (3-6 month) range for cannabis.

7. Increase Average Gross Margin

An increase in production with little to no extra operational expense means that production costs are spread over more crop production units, effectively increasing the average gross margin of the greenhouse.

8. Reduce Waste

By eliminating hot spots in the greenhouse and giving plants a tailored spectrum, some of our pilot trials have shown that the red-shifted and diffuse glow of UbiGro has resulted in reduced waste. For example, in tomatoes, we’ve seen a lower frequency of skin splitting; in cucumbers, we’ve seen fewer rejected fruits due to excess curling; and in cannabis, we’ve seen small increases in terpene and cannabinoid content.

9. Avoid Expensive Electrical Lighting

UbiGro can tailor the spectrum of light that your crops are receiving without implementing expensive lighting. This gives off-grid growers a spectrum-control option and alternatively allows on-grid growers to keep expenses down so they can thrive in today’s competitive markets.

10. Increase Sustainability

Greenhouses can become more sustainable by increasing their grams/Watt figure of merit and by using fewer fossil fuel inputs to generate larger yields. Grow more and make the best use of your one free resource – sunlight.

11. Harvest Glancing Angle Sunlight

UbiGro redirects low-angle sunlight into an overhead glow, making the best use of the sun even in the early mornings and evenings.

12. Mimic The Late Summer Sun In All Seasons

UbiGro helps greenhouse crops experience a consistent spectrum in all seasons. Many growers have noticed the similarity of UbiGro’s red-shifted spectrum to that of the late summer, a redder range that typically coincides with the best seasonal crop production.

13. Transform Sunlight Into An HPS-Like Spectrum

UbiGro’s emission centers in the amber (orange-red) region, around 600 nm. We engineered this spectrum partially because of legacy indoor growers’ success with HPS lamps, which also peak in this region and contain just a threshold amount of blue light.

14. High PAR Transmission

Compared to filters or dye films, UbiGro maintains a higher PAR intensity inside the greenhouse so that you don’t have to sacrifice quantity for quality – your plants can have both!

15. UbiGro Maintains The Green Light

While chlorophyll absorbs green light less efficiently than blue or red light, enhancing plant growth requires a spectrum that reaches deep into plant tissue and dense canopies. Green light, with its higher reflectance and lower absorptance, is crucial for driving photosynthesis effectively in these conditions, making it an essential component for crop yield enhancement. Unlike competing dye films that may alter the natural spectrum, UbiGro is designed to maintain sunlight’s green light fraction, ensuring almost no absorption in the green region of the spectrum. This approach not only supports sustainable farming solutions by preserving the quality of natural sunlight but also strategically modifies the light spectrum. By removing some UV and blue light, UbiGro increases the red/orange light fraction, which is known to boost growth rates and enhance crop yields, aligning with sustainable agricultural practices and enhancing plant growth efficiently.

16. Install Easily

Using versatile and customizable hardware, UbiGro can be customized to fit into any greenhouse type, size, shape, and façade material.

17. Maintain Low OpEx

With little to no maintenance required and a 4-6 year lifetime, you can ‘set it and forget it.’ UbiGro will passively convert sunlight for years after the initial installation.

To get started with a custom quote, contact us today [email protected].

17 Reasons To Use UbiGro In Your Greenhouse

Dr. Damon Hebert

Dr. Damon Hebert serves as Director of Agriculture Research for UbiQD, Inc., with a background in solar materials and controlled environment cannabis cultivation. He is an advocate for the use of advanced materials to further the industry’s push towards sustainable farming practices. He can be reached at [email protected].