Today’s episode continues our new special series “What Plants Crave from Technology.” In this new series, Dr. Sabeh will be interviewing equipment suppliers, manufacturers, and developers about the unique technological needs for growing crops indoors and greenhouses. This week’s guest is Dan Dettmers, Application Engineer with Quest Climate.

Dan Dettmers joined Quest 4 years ago with a 20+ year background in food/pharma processing, industrial refrigeration and HVAC infrastructure design. For 15 of those years Dan moonlighted at his own hop farm, the other member of the cannabacea family. With his partners, they developed a business that covered every aspect from plant propagation to final pelletization of the hops for their brewery customers.  They even designed and built harvesting and drying equipment for others joining the industry.

Dan’s primary duty at Quest is to help the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) industry solve their climate control problems to increase the productivity of their farms and quality of their products. He also works in R&D developing new products for Quest, sits on several industry standard writing bodies, and provides technical training both in and outside of the company.

Dan discusses the critical role of moisture management in Controlled Environment Agriculture. With a background in food/pharma processing and HVAC infrastructure design, Dettmers shares his experiences in helping the CEA industry solve climate control problems to enhance farm productivity and product quality. He also touches on his involvement in R&D and industry standard development.