Why Is Air Circulation Necessary for Greenhouse and Indoor Growing?

Whether growing in a greenhouse or indoor, air circulation is necessary to prevent diseases, increase produce quality and get higher yields.

Plants are living organisms and just like humans, they like to feel at home. Whether it be warm or cold, dry or humid, every plant has its own optimal conditions.

Supplying crops with what they need is the key to successful farming. In indoor settings, such as semi-closed greenhouses or completely closed off warehouses, every single factor is taken into consideration and cared for. Air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and vents are all part of the system designed to keep plants healthy and fruitful.

Air Circulation Reduces Micro Climates

In these settings, space is precious, the denser you place your crops, the better the value. But this creates problems. Within the dense foliage (high leaf area index – LAI), micro-climates appear. These are small pockets of air in which conditions are different than the rest of the space. Due to plants constantly transpiring and breathing, they change the conditions surrounding them.

These pockets of air may have different temperatures and humidity levels than we desire and try to maintain, which can lead to smaller yields, diminished quality and may allow for diseases such as botrytis to appear.

A common solution for this is with the use of fans and vents. Though they do diffuse small pockets of humidity and hot or cold air, due to their simple linear design, they don’t assist in creating homogeneous conditions. A simple fan moves air forward, creating different air conditions as the air is further away from the fan itself.

The best way to combat this is through efficient air circulation.

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Good air circulation is important but it is hard to achieve. It’s necessary for the air to reach all corners of the space equally, through different heights, to cover the entire plant, from base to canopy.

Air circulation is a matter of physics and it takes the correct design and engineering to achieve complete uniformity.