How do the CALCLEAR units work to lower the incidence of tipburn in hydroponically grown lettuce?

Tipburn is a browning and drying of the leaf margins, which often occurs as the heads reach harvest.

This disorder is a calcium transport problem within the plant and occurs when the foliage is losing water into the air faster than the roots can take it up or, in high humidity and low water loss conditions when the transpiration stream in which the calcium is transported becomes restricted.

The CALCLEAR units can lower the severity and incidence of tipburn by having a beneficial effect on xylem conductance. The xylem are the vessels within the plants which carry the water and dissolved calcium to the leaf tips.

This also resulted in higher levels of foliar calcium in the heads at the time of harvest in plants treated with the CALCLEAR units compared to the untreated control plants.

The CALCLEAR units not only improve uptake and transport of calcium, but they also seem to improve its utilisation in plant cell development.