[ad_1]
In March 2024, participants of the Early-Career Innovators’ Forum (ECIF) embarked on an exclusive tour of The Leaf Lab @ GrowUp Farms – a centre dedicated to research and innovation for supporting its commercial operation.
This event offered a first-hand look at plant science in a commercial vertical farming setting. Attendees explored challenges such as sourcing renewable energy and optimising growth conditions, witnessing research on plant development and testing of novel varieties. This immersive experience provided valuable insights into the science behind vertical farming and its potential for sustainable agriculture.
This blog post is authored by a group of students from Cohort 5 at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT (EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Agri-Food Robotics) at the University of Lincoln: Benjamin Nicholls, Catherine Merchant, Dimitris Paparas, Elliot Smith, and Liyou Zhou who are pursuing their MSc in Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
“Recently, we had the opportunity to visit Leaf Labs as part of the Agri-TechE Early-Career Innovators’ Forum (ECIF). The visit took place at their Bourn Quarter site just outside of Cambridge, providing us with valuable insights into the research conducted at GrowUp Farms’ production facilities center.
GrowUp is a company specialising in the production of leafy greens (lettuce, rocket) through vertical farming and controlled-environment agriculture. Their main production facility in Pepperness, Kent, aspires to become the blueprint for vertical farming operations in the UK and abroad – using a tenth of the water compared to traditional farming.
This site uses a highly automated production line and also manages to use 100% renewable energy. GrowUp’s produce can be bought from Iceland, Tesco, and Spar. Their main selling point is that the consumer’s hand is the first ever to touch the produce; due to the growing environment the salad does not need to be washed and thus has a longer shelf-life (double!).
Our visit to Leaf Labs introduced us to their state-of-the-art research facilities, where they attempt to tune the growing process to perfection. Our visit included a presentation detailing GrowUp’s operations, past, present and future, and a tour of the facilities. We had the opportunity to ask many questions to understand how vertical farming can operate commercially.
Thoughts from the day:
“I was astonished by the scale of their operations and the significant milestones they achieved. They have effectively created a lettuce factory – more so than a farm. It is hard to comprehend all the complex interactions at play, even in this highly controlled environment.
I was happy to hear that they are keen to explore data-driven optimisation further and achieve results faster. Going from seed to harvesting in three weeks is incredible, especially considering this happens year-round. I would highly recommend visiting their facilities.”
– Dimitrios Paparas
“It was great to have an insight into the methods in which GrowUp tackles the problem of farming. I think it has great applications and would like to see more companies follow this trend.The largest barrier is energy costs and if these can be mitigated then vertical farming can easily become widespread.”
– Benjamin Nicholls
ECIF events welcome early-career individuals from a variety of backgrounds including research, agronomy, engineering, consultancy, farming and tech development.
Whether you’ve recently graduated, are at the beginning of your professional agriculture or science career or are in graduate/further education studies, find out more about our ECIF programme and get involved! The next event in the ECIF calendar is the ECIF Conference: Sustainability in Action on 25 April 2024: book now!
Source link
