Gardin Pulse - Summer Product Update

Dear valued partner,

We’re pleased to announce several updates this summer season to enhance your cultivation with plant feedback.

DPI vs DLI Now Generally Available

A new DPI vs DLI feature has graduated from beta and is now included in all subscription tiers. This functionality offers a vital view into plant photosynthesis by correlating Daily Photochemical Index (DPI) with Daily Light Integral (DLI), enabling better understanding of how light is converted into plant biomass. This insight helps you make informed decisions on a target light sum to optimise crop outcomes.

New Product Offering with Ridder

In partnership with Ridder, the Gardin app is now integrated directly into Synopta. This seamless connection enables growers to act on plant feedback within the same environment used for climate control. As Sander Barake, Product Director at Ridder, explains:

“We’ve helped growers automate climate control around the crop. This next phase is about integrating real-time crop feedback into that loop, shifting from climate control to crop control.”

Contact your local Ridder sales representative to get setup with Gardin in Synopta. This includes real time data visualisation of plant photosynthesis with climate data as well as integrated Gardin app experience to show additional insights such as alerts, targets and benchmarks.

Understanding DPI vs DLI

Plants can only photosynthesise so much each day. Choosing the right daily light sum (DLI) is critical for achieving growth targets while managing energy costs. But knowing how much growth is gained per extra mol of light has been guesswork.

DPI (Daily Productivity Index) measures how much light the plant actually uses, based on electron transport rate (ETR). As DLI increases, DPI eventually plateaus meaning the same amount of additional light gives less growth, increasing costs.

Gardin’s new DPI vs DLI tool helps identify this saturation point and automatically recommends a target DLI where DPI reaches 75% of its maximum. This allows you to capture most of the growth potential in the crop at reasonable cost and can be adjusted based on local market and energy prices.

In combination with Gardin's existing Light Advisor feature, this provides total clarity on your lighting strategy:

1. Set smarter, cost-effective DLI targets

2. Adjust the photoperiod in each greenhouse to achieve consistent productivity

3. Avoid under/over-lighting and reduce electricity costs

4. Achieve more uniform growth across zones

Gardin Pulse - Spring Product Update

Dear valued partners,

We're excited to announce our latest product offering—Gardin Alerts! Many of you already rely on our Key Plant Indicators to manage your crops effectively. Gardin can offer peace of mind for your crop status but monitoring the platform everyday isn't always possible.

That's why we've developed Gardin Alerts, designed to proactively notify you when your plants require attention. Alerts enhance Gardin's existing monitoring capabilities, helping you to manage plant health proactively and optimise growing with effective cultivation strategies.

Value of Gardin Alerts

1. Detects cultivation issues early, before visible symptoms (e.g. crop registration) and yield impacts.

2. Identifies all types of plant stress including drought, excess lighting, and disease. Trials at Wageningen Research showed detection of powdery mildew in tomatoes several days before visible leaf effects.

3. Warnings for impact on both crop yield and quality. Trials at Delphy Improvement Centre identified reductions in Class-1 strawberries four weeks in advance.

4. Complements our existing 'Light Advisor' feature by alerting you when plants approach damaging light levels, enabling maximum growth without stress.

How It Works

Photosynthesis is one of the most important processes in plant physiology and so when plants are stressed, it is one of the first processes to be effected.

1. Analyses crop photosynthesis to determine when the plant is deteriorating, or improving. This helps to understand the current trajectory of your cultivation.

2. Issues alerts when algorithms detect significant future yield risks, enabling timely interventions.

3. Provides warnings when plant exposure exceeds safe light thresholds, helping you manage effective shading.

Activate Alerts Now

With customisable notifications, you’ll receive instant updates when your plants show signs of stress. This proactive approach allows you to take immediate corrective action, preserving plant vigor and significantly reducing the risk of crop damage or loss.

Overall, by incorporating Alerts into your cultivation practices, you’ll benefit from greater peace of mind, healthier plants, and improved greenhouse productivity. Our goal is to empower you with precise insights and timely information, helping you maintain optimal conditions consistently and achieve your highest possible yields.

Support and Feedback

This product update also comes with general fixes and improvements based on your valued feedback.

Please contact us with any questions and suggestions for how we can further improve your experience and support your cultivation goals.

Best regards,

The Gardin Team

Winter 2025 Product Update

We are excited to announce a major product update with several enhancements to help you manage your plant lighting strategy. The Plant Light Advisor is a data-driven tool designed to help you optimise your greenhouse lighting strategy which is now shown in our new All-In-One tile view. Leveraging our proprietary in-depth plant data, the Plant Light Advisor identifies the optimal plant efficiency and LED light output to maintain plant health and productivity—while managing energy costs and return on investment.

Key Benefits:

• Actionable Lighting Recommendations:

Determine the most efficient LED light level for efficiency plant growth and the maximum natural light level before shading becomes necessary.

• Energy Cost Savings:

Avoid wasting resources on excessive lighting by targeting the precise point at which plants benefit most, reducing unnecessary power consumption.

• Healthier Plants, Higher Yields:

Manage light saturation to achieve vibrant growth whilst protecting your crops from light-induced stress or damage.

How It Works:

Our algorithm analyses plant light-use efficiency data to identify two crucial points in each crop’s response:

• Light Saturation: The threshold where up to this point 1% more light gives roughly 1% more yield but any added light provides diminishing returns.

• Photoinhibition: The point where plants can no longer safely dissipate light energy, risking damage if exposure increases.

Practical Applications:

• LED Lighting Strategy: Adjust supplemental lighting to ensure your crops receive the most beneficial Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) levels, enhancing plant growth and yield.

• Shading Strategy: Set shading parameters to shield plants before harmful light levels are reached, preserving plant integrity without limiting necessary growth.

Outcomes You Can Expect:

• Better ROI on LED Investments: Make informed decisions on lighting equipment and utilization, ensuring every watt you pay for goes to productive plant growth.

• More predictable outputs: Maintaining the plants at a consistent and beneficial efficiency level will create an improvement in crop health and reliable amount of photosynthesis for growth.

• Energy Efficiency & Sustainability: Reduce energy waste and operational costs, contributing to more sustainable growing practices.

By integrating the Plant Light Advisor into your greenhouse environment, you’ll be equipped to make smarter, data-backed decisions—resulting in healthier plants, optimized energy use, and better returns on your lighting investments.

All-in-One Tile View

The newly designed interface provides a comprehensive overview of your farm's performance, featuring:

• Real-time plant health monitor

• Light efficiency indicator with optimal/minimum levels

• Productivity metrics at the leaf level for tracking growth

• Assimilate balance for maintaining source-sink relationship

Dear valued customers,

We're thrilled to announce a major update to Gardin Pulse, just in time for the lighting season. This new version introduces several enhancements and features designed to improve your experience and add value. It's the first in a series of updates aimed at helping you optimize your lighting strategy for the upcoming season.

Key Updates:

• Better DLI:

  • Many of you use Daily Light Integral (DLI) to estimate and track plant production. However, DLI overlooks plant health status, which significantly impacts sugar production from photosynthesis.

  • Gardin combines plant efficiency measurements with localized PAR measurements to calculate the electron transport rate—the driver of photosynthesis light reactions.

  • We call this metric "PRODUCTIVITY" as it most closely relates to the actual production occurring in the plant throughout the day, yielding the Daily Photosynthesis Integral (DPI).

  • By adjusting your light strategy to a DPI target, you can achieve more consistent and reliable plant growth at a lower cost by extending or shortening the day as needed.

  • DPI offers an improved measurement of plant assimilation. Controlling 24-hour temperatures to a DPI ensures the plant can adequately metabolize its sugars, resulting in higher plant yields and lower heating costs.

  • Additionally, DPI can be integrated into crop models to enhance yield forecasting and improve your planning.

• Other updates:

  • One of our new innovations measures PAR at individual leaf level across the canopy. This provides a more accurate PAR measure compared to open-space greenhouse meters. We combine these measurements with plant light use efficiency to calculate our PRODUCTIVITY index and provide a PPFD index for leaf-level light intensity and PAR sum.

  • Gardin's HEALTH index now detects plant stress earlier, with 50% increased sensitivity - enabling quicker intervention to prevent losses and boost production. You may experience lower health scores compared to previously due to increased sensitivity.

  • Per user requests, EFFICIENCY index shows nighttime values and responds faster to observe plant relaxation to environmental changes. Our sensor can measure the relaxation of chlorophyll at night with faster relaxation suggesting less stress during the day.

Support and Feedback

This update will be automatically applied to your account, however, you may need to log out of your account and login again to see the changes.

If you have any questions about the new features or encounter any issues after the update, please don't hesitate to contact our support team. We value your feedback and are always looking to improve your experience with Gardin.

Thank you for your continued support and trust.

Best regards,

The Gardin Team