Biodiversity / Food / Water

October 27, 2011

 

Mitsubishi Plastics Group Starts Verifying Tomato Cultivation at Solar Light Plant Factory

Keywords: Food Manufacturing industry Renewable Energy University / Research institute 

JFS/Mitsubishi Plastics Group Starts Verifying Tomato Cultivation at Solar Light Plant Factory
Copyright Mitsubishi Plastics


Mitsubishi Plastics, Inc. announced on June 14, 2011, that it has completed its experiment on its facilities for a plant factory using solar light in the Center for Environment, Health and Field Science of Chiba University in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture. The demonstration facilities were constructed as part of an integrated project promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries for plant factory verification, display and training. With its completion, Mitsubishi Plastics will start verification experiments to establish a business model of the plant factory, it was announced by the company.

Mitsubishi Plastics group companies, particularly its agricultural material producing subsidiary MKV Dream Co. as a main player, have been working on the development of plant factories using sunlight. The group has thus been participating in a consortium to verify "high-density plant cultivation by single truss tomato grown in hydroponics using moving bench to achieve reduced chemicals and increased harvest" - a verification project now being carried out by Chiba University, one of the bases of the project under the ministry.

The verification experiment aims to establish a business model for low-cost and reduced-chemical plant factories, which yields tomatoes with sugar content of around 6 (degrees). In the experiment, a closed-type transplant production system with artificial light is used to produce high-quality transplants; then used in an agricultural house employing UV-cut high-function film and a moisture-permeable curtain. Implemented in this house high-density production system by single-truss tomato plants, use of NFT (a kind of hydroponics) to grow higher quality tomatoes. Furthermore, the project aims to achieve an annual harvest of 50 tons per 0.25 acre (1,000 square meters), 2.5 times more than a normal tomato harvest in Japan. In this verification experiment, the group will also verify productivity, cost, energy savings and other variables. Furthermore, they intend to sell harvested tomatoes on a trial basis to prove the project's economic efficiency.

Posted: 2011/10/27 06:00:15 AM

Japanese  

Reference

Mitsubishi Plastics, Inc. official website
http://www.mpi.co.jp/english/


 

このページの先頭へ