The next hurdle the company must overcome is with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to determine if the product can be classified as a fertilizer. Furthermore, the Office for Medical Cannabis must also approve the spray for use in the cannabis sector. Currently, LP’s are limited to only using water in foliar sprays, but CO2 GRO is optimistic their spray, which is 99.8% natural water will gain clearance in the Canadian market.
With approval of the carbon dioxide-infused water as a foliar spray, carbon dioxide supplementation for leafy green produce such as lettuce, tobacco, spinach, potatoes, sugar beets, and even cannabis could become easier and much more efficient in the very near future. With patent-pending technology, CO2 GRO is poised to bring massive growth potential to crops everywhere.
|CO2 Supplementation for Cannabis|
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a primary element required for photosynthesis in all plants. In addition to oxygen, light, and water, carbon dioxide is necessary for the plant to thrive. Increasing the CO2 levels during the vegetative and flowering stages can increase chlorophyll production, which, in turn, increases sugar production and fuels massive growth potential in the cannabis plant or any other leafy greens.
In addition, CO2 supplementation can help the plant handle certain environmental stressors such as high humidity and excessive heat or light. CO2 can also increase the plant’s resilience making it less susceptible to pests and some diseases. Finally, CO2 supplementation can shorten the length of time to harvest, allowing growers to increase the number of crops they can harvest each year.
|CO2 GRO Inc.: Patent-Pending Gas-Infusion Process|
Growers have been supplementing greenhouses with CO2 gasses for more than six decades. However, gassing a greenhouse results in a tremendous amount of loss as much of the carbon dioxide gas will escape before it can be utilized by the plants. With CO2 GRO Inc.’s patent-pending process for dissolving gasses into water, horticulturists can target the element directly onto the leaves of the plant through a foliar spray.
Using a sub-2 micron particle, once the water is infused with carbon, it doesn’t come out until the plant uses it. This method of applying CO2 directly to the leaves of the plant, rather than gassing the entire greenhouse, can ultimately save growers about 50% of their typical gassing costs as well as increase plant growth. Plus, most gasses used in greenhouses are pumped in at 800ppm, CO2 GRO’s process can infuse up to 2000ppm into the water increasing the availability of the CO2 from the beginning.
In general, cultivators supplementing with CO2 gasses typically see about a 33% increase in plants on average despite the inefficiencies. In an interview with Midas Letter Live, Same Kanes, VP of Business Develop stated, they anticipate growers seeing up to a 50% increase in harvests, or in the case of cannabis, adding one additional growth cycle to the year.
|Ancillary Benefits |
A couple of other notable benefits to the CO2 supplementation include being all organic and applicable in an outdoor setting. As long as the CO2 is sourced from ethanol or biogas using the foliar spray keeps crops 100% organic. 99.8% of the product is simply natural water, the other .2% is beverage-grade, sub-2 micron particles of carbon. As Kanes explains it, essentially this is a “carbon milkshake” for the plants.
In the past, outdoor crops had to rely on the CO2 supplied by mother nature, as gassing an outdoor crop is a waste. With CO2 GRO’s foliar spray, even outdoor crops are able to benefit from CO2 supplementation through irrigation systems. Currently being testing in Colorado, the company has a 5-acre cannabis crop being supplemented with the spray.
CO2 Grow Inc.’s mission is to increase the growth of all value plants safely, economically and naturally using patented advanced CO2 technologies with a sole focus on working with their plant grower and agri-industrial partners to prove and adopt CO2 technologies for each specific growers’ plant yield needs. Throughout 2018 they are continuing their cannabis trials on both indoor and outdoor cannabis cultivation facilities, as well as, hydroponic grow systems and other crops such as lettuce, potatoes, and grape vines.
