Vineland is expanding its greenhouse services offerings

This announcement comes shortly after Vineland also began offering biologicals services. To learn more about these programs and others, we reached out to Tania Humphrey, Vice President of Research and Development at Vineland.

Brian Sparks: What was the reasoning behind launching these types of services at Vineland?

Tania Humphrey: It actually started a few years ago. We're in the innovation space and we have a whole bunch of really smart people here with different expertise in biologicals, breeding, and automation. We kept getting approached by technology companies that service growers, who are also in the business of product development and innovation and had a need for research support. These companies would approach us and we'd do some contract work with them.

The more we got into this, the more we realized there's a real need among companies who have an existing product and are looking for a neutral third-party validation study with valid scientific data. We do a lot of validation of products for greenhouse production. The more we're getting into this space, the more we're putting ourselves out there and targeting companies who are looking for those services. Our primary target is technology companies who provide their products to growers. We are open to doing work for individual growers if they want to do specific trials. It's been a gradual shift as we become more proactive in engaging with clients.

We've always worked through grower associations who will co-invest with us, and now there are companies that want to own the results of the data for their own purposes. We've also worked directly with growers to evaluate their labor utilization and make recommendations on technologies.

Sparks: It seems like that's got to be a pretty valuable service, to help growers know how to take the next step of investing in automation.

Humphrey: We see a real need for that, because typically what happens is, a grower goes to a trade show or they meet with a local company and it's all about sales, so there may be a degree of skepticism out there. That is part of our value, because we're an independent nonprofit and can offer neutral scientific recommendations.

Sparks: Can you talk a little bit about taking research that goes on in one of your own facilities and applying it to real-world growing operations?

Humphrey: Part of what we have done is set ourselves up as a kind of pre-commercial space that helps us do things at a bit larger scale that more closely resembles what the industry is using. It's not identical, but we try to emulate the commercial environment as much as possible in our own facility. We also work with growers at their facilities if they are close, so we can run trials at commercial growing operations.

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Source: Greenhouse Grower