The AROYA Guide to Crop Steering
In recent years, crop steering has taken on a life of its own in the cannabis industry. You hear growers, cultivation software providers and AgTech firms talk about it all the time. But what is it? How did we get here? Today let’s talk about crop steering: what it is, how to do it, why it’s important, and how you can benefit from it.
What is crop steering?
Crop steering is a plant growth management practice that manipulates the environment (light, climate, irrigation) to encourage plants to grow a certain way. Next to light intensity, it’s the most important tactic you can use to manipulate yield.
How does crop steering work?
Crop steering is not new. It’s been practiced by growers of hydroponic vegetables for years. About seven years ago, we brought it over to the cannabis industry. We saw these practices in hydroponic vegetable production, where growers were able to really direct the way that their plants grow, and shape that plant literally just by changing irrigation tactics, changing a little this or that about the climate, any one number of little tiny tweaks that would then have this huge effect on these plants.
As we took it into cannabis, we kept tweaking the process to perfect it for each strain, in each grow environment. One of the first trials was just hammering plants with tons of shots of water, just going as absolutely vegetative as we could, because we knew that was the way to get plants to grow the quickest.
Doing that from day one of veg and keeping with that hyper-vegetative signaling all the way through the end of flowering, we saw we could get the plants to get to 12 feet tall. It was a total gamechanger. We’d never seen plants grow that tall, that fast before. (We only got in trouble when they started leaning over our neighbor's fences.)
So we started playing around with the technology a little bit. Toying around with the osmotic potential and/or the matric potential, depending on what you have. If you're into natural soil, you have matric potential to play with. If you're in a hydroponic, you really don't.
Matric Potential v Osmotic Potential
Taking it a step back further, the matric potential is the force that the roots have to overcome to absorb water from the soil. Osmotic potential is the force they have to overcome to extract water against a really high EC (electrical conductivity) environment. The inside of the roots is at a certain EC, and it's held higher than the outside of the root, so that that water flows naturally with that osmotic gradient. So if you raise that EC, it makes it harder for the plant to absorb that water.
We use some specific irrigation tactics to get the plant in a state of simulated water stress. There's all the water in the world for that plant to drink, and it has all the resources it needs to grow as fast as it possibly can, but what we're doing is we're just telling the plants: "Hey, your water is not always going to be there." This puts it into a generative state that has it focused on reproductive parts. And so when we say generative versus vegetative, that's part of what we’re changing when we talk about toggling crops back and forth between vegetative and generative.
Vegetative v Generative Phases
There are two grow phases: vegetative and generative. Vegetative growth is where plants establish themselves with more leaves, top growth and longer roots. Generative growth is where plants produce flowers and fruits. In crop steering, you’re cueing your plants to lean more heavily in one of these two directions. Maintaining a proper balance between the two stages is vital for healthy plants with a high yield.
Crop Steering Made Simple
Knowing how—and when—to manipulate light, climate and irrigation is essential to balancing high yields and high quality. Here’s a rough guide for every type of growth.
Crop steering utilizes vegetative and generative cues through three main pillars: Light, Climate and Irrigation. Through all these cues in combination, you can encourage plants to produce bigger flowers and higher quality.
Generative is just targeted intentional stress, and the resulting behavior of plants is to focus on reproductive parts so that they can finish getting their DNA out into the world before they die, basics of evolutionary selection. And so the vegetative, on the other hand, is removing all of that stress, and just treating that plant to the absolute maximum that you can so that it can grow at the fastest speed that it can.
In crop steering, we use the timing of those when we apply, which, one, to get the plants to put on more bud sites, well, almost double the count of bud sites typically, versus just not doing anything or going vegetative as opposed to generative during that time. And then using it to really bulk those flowers out once they're there and the plant has that focus, and we don't need to force that focus anymore. We can just get that thing pumping up those flowers as big as possible.
The Importance of Precision Crop Steering
One of the big things we notice is the fine line between being too vegetative or being too generative in terms of quality and yield. Every specific cultivar has its own feeding needs. This is why automated crop steering is so essential for the future and how we progress as an industry.
Using crop steering tech will allow you to bring out the most of your cultivar. For instance, if you look at craft cultivator 1.0 eight months ago, and he's in these rooms and he's picking up his pot, he's got his little petri dish under the plant, it's catching its run-off, and every night he's pouring his run-off into his milliliter cup and taking his notes and dialing that all in, he gets his test, he's excited.
Then you fast forward seven months to craft cultivator 2.0, and you start looking at what the different crop steering method brings out in the cultivar. You start seeing the terpene analysis rising, you see your THC rising, your total cannabinoid rising. Hitting these specific water content moisture levels and drying back to these precision amounts, and bouncing back and really steering that battleship through these rough waters, it's going to bring the most out of the cultivar that you're working with.
Once we stress plants out, then we’re steering vegetatively to try to bulk, bulk, bulk. We want to see good quality bud and plants that aren’t too leafy. Every strain has this balance of maximizing yield, and maximizing the quality. For each (approximate) 12-week growth period, it’s vital to nail the first three weeks to set the plant up for success for the rest of its nine weeks.
The first three weeks are really the plants’ launch point. If you miss the boat there, that boat's gone. During that bulking phase, there's definitely a point of pushing too hard. You can see it when you get the white hairs in week seven. You can avoid that by just backing a little bit off of the frequency, and maybe letting the EC creep up a little bit more or something like that, and then you usually find that sweet spot.
There's a little bit of balancing act to do with each genetic so that you can really push that thing to get bulk, the best quality, and the best yield that you can possibly get out of it. And there's always the potential to get more yield, but it may not necessarily be the yield that you want. It might not be the product that you want to yield that much of.
At AROYA, we’ve seen many, many rooms that are getting four, four and-a-half pounds of light, or 80-90 grams a square foot and the quality is still just absolute fire ... just 35 plus cannabinoids, all that good stuff. With precision crop steering, there is definitely the capability to get large yields and quality at the same time.
The AROYA Approach
Getting the right data is so important. What we've done at AROYA is we've been able to create historical data and utilize that information to enhance each one of these phases of growth. Vegetative steering tends to be lower electrical conductivity (EC), higher water content, lower VPD, lower light intensity. Generative cues tend to be higher light intensity, higher VPD, bigger dry backs, lower water content, higher EC. So in conjunction with each other, we are able to steer the plant through the different phases to produce the flower to be bigger and better quality without losing any of our production.
We make cutting-edge sensor technology, the telemetry systems to install and use these, and we make the software layer that turns the data into insights. That deep expertise is specifically tailored to the needs of the cannabis grower. Plus our market-specific platform and resident experts can help you get the most out of your crop steering with the least amount of nutrient burn: time after time and at scale.
Our platform includes sensors that measure accurately throughout the cultivation process, and we can help you monitor every variable: Light intensity, pest control, soil nutrient content, atmosphere, air flow, air quality, water quantity, water quality and water frequency. We put you in control of the entire growing process to get the largest quantity at the highest grade, guaranteeing increased yields of at least 5g per square foot of harvest.
And that's AROYA's goal, is to help educate and work with each one of you as growers because each one of you has a different facility, a different strain, and different steering capabilities. And through our historical data, we build the knowledge of your crop and your strain in each one of your facilities, and that's what we're able to drive forward to you as a grower.
At AROYA, we've been able to create historical data and utilize that information to enhance each one of these phases of growth. So in conjunction with each other, we are able to steer the plant through the different phases to produce the flower to be bigger and better quality without losing any of our production.
It's not just a phase
Knowing how—and when—to manipulate light, climate and irrigation is essential to balancing high yields and high quality. Here's a rough guide for every type of growth.
| Grow Phase | Vegetative | Generate |
|---|---|---|
| Electrical Conductivity | ⬇ | ⬆ |
| Water Content | ⬆ | ⬇ |
| Vapor Pressure Deficit | ⬇ | ⬆ |
| Temperature | ⬆ | ⬇ |
| Irrigation Frequency | ⬆ | ⬇ |
| Feed Duration | ⬆ | ⬇ |
Vegetative steering tends to be lower EC, higher water content, lower VPD, lower light itensity. // Generative cues tend to be higher light intensity, higher VPD, bigger dry backs, lower water content, higher EC.
Putting Crop Steering Into Motion
Here is a quick summary to be successful. Cultivators respond to generative and vegetative cues in the following key areas:
- Electrical Conductivity (EC):The amount of dissolved fertilizer in a solution as determined by the ease at which electricity can move through the water; EC is a direct measure of the amount of water that roots can access immediately for transpiration and growth. For a deep dive into EC, check out ourvideo.
- Drybacks:The difference in volumetric water content (VWC) - expressed as a decrease in VWC% - from the last irrigation event of a given day (maximum saturation) to the first irrigation event of the following day (lowest VWC level).
- Field capacity:The point after/during irrigation at which a substrate can no longer hold any more water. Check out thisvideofor more about field capacity.
- Leachate:The solution that is not absorbed by the medium during an irrigation event once it has reached its maximum potential saturation; also known asrunoff.
- Shot size:The volume applied during an irrigation event, or shot - usually expressed in total volume (mL) or as a percentage of the total media volume. For example: a “3% shot” means the volume of the irrigation water applied is equal to 3% of the total substrate volume.
- Volumetric Water Content (VWC):The volume of water per volume of substrate, expressed as a percentage (%). Check out thisvideofor more on volumetric water content.
- Water Content (WC):The volume of nutrient solution (water + nutrients) in the substrate.
Crop steering is an approach to craft cultivation that allows growers to have greater agency over their plants. Being able to steer plants toward a target outcome doesn’t just empower cultivators - it also makes their lives easier.
That’s our reasoning for developing AROYA, the ultimate cannabis production platform. With sensors that see inside the substrate and a platform that tracks and monitors your grow at every stage, cultivators get all the insights they need to be able to steer their plants successfully.
FAQs
What is crop steering? ›
Crop steering is a method of managing the growth of plants directly through irrigation and climate. By changing these aspects, a grower can steer or direct the growth of a plant towards a specific goal or target whether it is vegetative or generative.
How do you control plant height during flowering? ›–Defoliation during the flowering stage: Remove leaves, bend thick stems and branches, prevent the grow of plants upwards.
What is generative growth? ›What is generative growth? Generative growth, or flowering, directs plant energy toward flower production. The plant's energy is directed toward reproduction when it enters this stage.
What is generative stage of plants? ›Generative growth is the development of flowers, fruits and seeds. The plant divides its energy between vegetative and generative growth. The leaves of a plant are the sugar producing organ of the plant. The more vegetative growth, the more leaf surface is created that can be used for sugar production.
What are the 4 types of cropping? ›Types of Cropping Systems: Mono cropping; Crop Rotation; Sequential Cropping; Inter Cropping; Relay Cropping.
When should you Supercrop a car? ›Can you super crop autoflowers? Yes, and a minority of auto growers do so regularly when growing autoflowering cannabis seeds. Super cropping is useful if your main central bloom is growing significantly faster/taller than the rest of your autoflower.
How do you fatten up buds before harvesting? ›To some degree, more light translates to fatter buds and higher yields (you'll need to pay attention to the distance between your grow light and plants or your plant may suffer from light burn). Increasing light intensity is the most effective way to fatten up buds.
How do you increase bud yield? ›Top and train your plants by removing the top growth right about a node. This encourages the two buds below the cut to grow into new branches. Increase water intake, keeping in mind that roots are starting to grow outward and not directly down, so you need to start watering farther out from the stem.
How do you make buds swell up? ›Another tip for growing bigger buds involves regularly feeding compost tea to your soils. Compost teat helps develop healthy mycorrhizal relationships between the soil and mycelium. The more mycelium in the soil, the more nutrients the plant is going to take up, which will result in bigger buds.
What is vegetative vs generative crop steering? ›Growers use generative steering to initiate the flowering cycle with the change in photoperiod. Once flowers have set, and after around the first defoliation, they will switch to a vegetative strategy to keep the plant healthy and increase the bulking of flowers.
What are the basic principles of generative design? ›
Generative design is an iterative design process that involves a program that will generate a certain number of outputs that meet certain constraints, and a designer that will fine tune the feasible region by selecting specific output or changing input values, ranges and distribution.
What are generative techniques? ›Generative research is defined as a method of research that helps researchers develop a deeper understanding of users in order to find opportunities for solutions and innovation. Sometimes referred to as discovery or exploratory research, the goal is always the same.
What are the 7 stages of plant growth? ›The main stages in the life cycle of a plant are seed germination, seedling formation, growth, development and differentiation leading to a mature plant, pollination and fertilisation and the formation of fruit and seeds.
What are the 5 stages of a plant? ›Plantlife cycles consist of five stages: seed, seed germination, seedling, adult plant, and pollination and fertilization.
What are the 4 stages of plant growth? ›The plant life cycle consists of four stages; seed, sprout, small plant, and adult plant.
What are the big 3 crops? ›The crops of corn, beans, and squash are known as the Three Sisters. For centuries these three crops have been the center of Native American agriculture and culinary traditions.
What are the 7 basic principles of crop production? ›There are about 7 basic principles of crop production which include preparation of soil, sowing, adding manure and fertilizers, irrigation, weeding, harvesting and proper storage.
What are the 3 main crops grown? ›Corn, soybeans, barley and oats
The largest United States crop in terms of total production is corn, the majority of which is grown in a region known as the Corn Belt. The second largest crop grown in the United States is soybeans.
THE END RESULT: BIGGER, BETTER YIELDS
Super cropping, while daunting, is a great high-stress technique that can have a massive impact on the size and quality of your yield (as long as you know what you're doing). Use this article as a guide during your next grow, and see the benefits of super cropping for yourself!
Usage: Big Bud is for use as a flowering booster & stimulator in addition to your usual hydroponic base nutrient (preferably Sensi Bloom or Connoisseur) from week 2 of flowering through to 3 weeks before harvest. Add Big Bud to your feed water/nutrient solution at a rate of 2ml/Litre and again mix well.
How far into flower can you Supercrop? ›
Work your way up the branch, leaving a few centimeters between each crop. We don't recommend cropping anything above 2–3 nodes from the tip.
How do I make my buds dense and heavy? ›Increasing the amount of CO₂ in your grow room can help you grow bigger, denser buds. By doing so, you'll help plants photosynthesise faster and encourage them to take up more nutrients and water.
What is the best bud hardener? ›General Hydroponic KoolBloom
Available as Liquid KoolBloom or Dry KoolBloom, this additive is widely regarded as the best bud hardener out there.
Stop Watering 1-3 Days Before Harvest – After flushing, in the final days of harvest, you can further stress your plants by stopping watering. You want to allow the plant to start to wilt just a small amount, because then the plant “thinks” it is dying and as a last-ditch effort, it will increase resin development.
How do I make my buds thicker and longer? ›- Pruning – Cut off the nodes that are lower down on the plant. ...
- Training – Training is the other way to keep all of your buds at the same height to ensure they are getting enough light.
Nitrogen is responsible for plant growth in the vegetative stage, Phosphorus helps in photosynthesis, and Potassium is essential in bud and terpene production so it's essential you provide these nutrients if you want to have good results. NPK are the main nutrients your weed needs to grow.
What is the best fertilizer for bud? ›- Nitrogen: Worm castings, blood meal, fish meal, bat guano.
- Phosphorus: Bone meal, rock dust.
- Potassium: Wood ash, kelp meal.
- Calcium and magnesium: Dolomite lime.
- 1.) Provide the right amount of light.
- 2.) Start with a strain that tends to grow dense buds.
- 3.) Control temperature.
- 4.) Cannabis Nutrients.
- 5.) Expose all buds to both light and a gentle breeze.
- 6.) Take care of roots.
- 7.) Keep Humidity Under 55% RH for Last 2-3 Weeks Before Harvest.
- 8.)
Adding extra flavour to your buds is easy when you use aromatic products such as essentials oils, spices, fruits, and even beverages like wine or whiskey. Take a cotton ball and put some of the essential oils, wine, or whiskey on it. Hang the cotton ball from the lid of your curing jar.
How does the 4 crop rotation work? ›The Four-Bed Crop Rotation System
Essentially, each area should be planted with a different plant family each season (generally every six months), to help avoid any nasty pest and disease outbreaks.
What are the 4 types of vegetative propagation? ›
- Stem. Runners grow horizontally above the ground. ...
- Roots. New plants emerge out of swollen, modified roots known as tubers. ...
- Leaves. Leaves of a few plants get detached from the parent plant and develop into new plants.
- Bulbs. ...
- Cutting. ...
- Grafting. ...
- Layering. ...
- Tissue Culture.
- 1.Vegetative propagated plants are short lived, small compared to seed propagated plants.
- 2.No new varieties can be produced.
- 3.Skilled persons are required and often expensive compared to seed propagation.
- More susceptible to diseases as the entire plant may get affected as there is no genetic variation.
Start with the six principles of design: balance, pattern, rhythm, emphasis, contrast, and unity. Just as instructional design models and methodologies shape your training strategy, so should these principles shape your basic visual strategy. By applying them, you can create high-impact visuals.
What are the 7 visual design principles in architecture? ›The fundamental principles of design are: Emphasis, Balance and Alignment, Contrast, Repetition, Proportion, Movement and White Space.
What coding language is used for generative art? ›You can use just about any programming language to create generative art. The most popular programming languages used in generative art include: Python. R.
What is an example of generative? ›An example of a generative model might be one that is trained on collections of images from the real world in order to generate similar images. The model might take observations from a 200GB set of images and reduce them into 100MB of weights. Weights can be thought of as reinforced neural connections.
What is an example of generative process? ›Drawing is a generative process because it involves selecting related ideas from the text, organizing the concepts in pictorial form, and making use of pre-existing knowledge to demonstrate the meaning of the ideas in the drawing.
What are the 8 learning strategies of generative learning NLP? ›In this article, we present eight learning strategies intended to promote generative learning: summarizing, mapping, drawing, imagin- ing, self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and enacting.
What are the 6 essentials for plant growth? ›- Nitrogen (N) Nitrogen is a key element in plant growth. ...
- Phosphorus (P) Phosphorus helps transfer energy from sunlight to plants, stimulates early root and plant growth, and hastens maturity. ...
- Potassium (K) ...
- Calcium (Ca) ...
- Magnesium (Mg) ...
- Sulfur (S)
Sixteen elements are considered essential nutrients for plants. These are carbon (C), oxygen (O), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), boron (B), molybdenum (Mo) and chlorine (Cl).
What are the 6 requirements for plant growth? ›
These six essential nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur and calcium. The cool thing about these key nutrients is that they help create new cells, which then organize into plant tissue. Without these nutrients, growth and survival would not occur.
What are the 4 most important parts of a plant? ›The main parts of a plant are roots, stem, leaves, flowers and fruit.
What are the 10 steps to plant growth? ›- Choose the right location. ...
- Select your veggies. ...
- Prepare the soil. ...
- Check planting dates. ...
- Plant the seeds. ...
- Add water. ...
- Keep the weeds out. ...
- Give your plants room to grow.
These are: 0 germination; 1 seedling growth (leaves on main stem); 2 tillering; 3 stem elongation (nodes); 4 booting; 5 ear emergence; 6 flowering; 7 milk development; 8 dough development; 9 ripening. Each primary growth stage is then sub-divided into 10 secondary stages extending the scale from 00 to 99.
What is the most important stage of plant growth? ›The seedling stage is one of the most critical phases during a plant's life history.
What are the 5 main stages of growth in a flowering plant? ›- Germination.
- Growth.
- Flowering.
- Seed formation.
- Seed dispersal.
The Crop Insurance Contract
A crop insurance contract is a commitment between insured farmers and their insurance providers. Either party has the right to cancel or terminate the contract at the end of each crop year. Unless the contract is canceled, it is normally automatically renewed the next year.
Crop rotation is the practice of planting different crops sequentially on the same plot of land to improve soil health, optimize nutrients in the soil, and combat pest and weed pressure.
What is crop stalking? ›What are stalk crops? Stalk crops are the tips of the root of a plant, namely the parts that grow above the ground. With stalk crops, it is all about the fleshy leafstalks.
What is cropping system with example? ›A cropping system refers to the type and sequence of crops grown and practices used for growing them. It encompasses all cropping sequences practiced over space and time based on the available technologies of crop production (Table 7.1). Cropping systems have been traditionally structured to maximize crop yields.
What is the largest crop insurance company? ›
1.Agriculture Insurance Firm of India Limited
It insures about 20 million farmers, making it the world's largest crop insurer by number of farmers served. Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited, located in New Delhi, India, is a development financing institution.
Crop insurance is divided into two categories, the federally subsidized multiple-peril crop insurance and the state-regulated private crop insurance. In 2021, over $14 million in premiums were written for multiple-peril crop insurance and over $1.2 million in premiums were written for private crop insurance.
What is not covered in crop insurance? ›Following is a list of what's covered and what's not under such policies: Loss or damage to the property of the insured farmer. Damage or loss caused due to fire or natural disaster (including storm, flood, tornado, earthquake, cyclone etc.) Coverage for personal accident.
What is the 4 crop rotation method? ›Four-field rotations
The sequence of four crops (wheat, turnips, barley and clover), included a fodder crop and a grazing crop, allowing livestock to be bred year-round. The four-field crop rotation became a key development in the British Agricultural Revolution.
Increase water available for plants. Reduce soil erosion, crusting and sedimentation. Replenish plant nutrients in the soil. Limits of pests infestations and crop diseases.
What is the best crop rotation? ›Ideally, rotate a vegetable (or vegetable family) so that it grows in a particular place once out of every 3 to 4 years. For example, if you planted tomatoes in the same garden bed year after year, they're more likely to be hit by the same pests or diseases that affected your tomato crop last year.
What is a crop duster? ›crop duster, usually, an aircraft used for dusting or spraying large acreages with pesticides, though other types of dusters are also employed.
What is crop Reaper? ›A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps (cuts and often also gathers) crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass.
How do you stop people from stealing crops? ›Most fields have either “No Trespassing” signs posted or purple paint on light poles, trees, posts, or somewhere on the property. (In North Carolina, the Landowner Protection Act allows landowners to post their land using purple paint. This may be different in other states.)
What are the 3 types of crop? ›By use, crops fall into six categories: food crops, feed crops, fiber crops, oil crops, ornamental crops, and industrial crops. Food crops, such as fruit and vegetables, are harvested for human consumption.
What are the three types of cropping? ›
Cropping Patterns-Mixed Cropping, Intercropping, Crop Rotation.
Which cropping system is best? ›Sequential cropping (growing one crop after another in the same year) and intercropping are types of multiple cropping and include numerous different systems. Sequential systems are most common where the growing season is long, and intercropping systems are most popular where labor is readily available and inexpensive.