Healthy living & lifestyle
However, some growers are resorting to water vapour condensers in their ventilation systems to capture and return the water back into their systems. As a result, according to the US National Park Service, water usage can be brought down to just 10% of what would ordinarily be required for conventional farming outdoors. As Professor Derek Stewart, director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC) at the Institute, puts it: “There are several projects which are currently looking at extending the effectiveness of vertical farming, including increasing food sustainability.”
Enhancing fresh produce “One of the main projects is looking at ways of enhancing fresh produce and ensuring there is maximum efficiency within its production,” adds Stewart. “We are doing this by focusing on ways to reduce the carbon footprint during the yield process, and ensuring we can maintain, or even enhance, certain qualities from taste to aroma. More recent work has included exploring boosting the nutritional content of fresh produce.”
“The recent fresh produce scarcity is a clear example of the energy cost crisis leading to a collapse in UK production, with huge impacts on food and nutritional security.”
Professor Derek Stewart
Stewart notes that within vertical farming, total control of the growing environment will be a powerful tool. He adds: “However, we have found that with some great sophistication, we can also control the plant biochemistry, allowing us to effectively switch off and on some of the biosynthetic pathways, demonstrating that the ability to tailor the produce quality is within our grasp.”
What this means in reality is being able to tailor the taste and aroma of many fresh produce crops, without resorting to any form of genetic manipulation or gene editing. “Allied to this, and by manipulating the light recipes – wavelengths, intensity, duration etcetera – and inputs – fertiliser and specific additions – we have shown that we can enhance vitamin, mineral and protein contents in these crops,” he further notes. This paves the way to creating nutrient dense crops for all, or to offer new enhanced produce to groups with specific nutritional needs, such as the young, ill or nutritionally compromised.
Tools and technologies
As an extension of this, the institute is also exploring vertical-farming-based tools and technologies for next-
42
generation pharma and ingredients, such as sustainable natural colours, and bioactive and functional molecules.
A key consideration is what can be done to drive future growth. For Stewart, the pathway is clear; namely removing the main barrier of the cost of production. Moreover, the systems should be integrated with renewable energy systems, sources, and the sector as a whole. One potential consequence, for example, is that crop production may move to areas where renewable energy is plentiful, rather than where the crops are traditionally grown; even if on-farm renewable energy is already a growing sector, according to Stewart. “The recent fresh produce scarcity is a clear example of the energy cost crisis leading to a collapse in UK production, with huge impacts on food and nutritional security.” Indeed, ‘black swan’ events such as the Covid pandemic induced fraying of global supply chains and the more recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, has hammered home the point that some events can neither be legislated for nor anticipated. In the meantime – and as a turn-key provider for indoor farming – CambridgeHOK knows better than most when it comes to optimising the total design for a specific facility. Joint managing director, Patrick Harte, argues that while there are currently higher energy and material challenges for the sector as a whole, such costs “are relatively short-term items with both costs now starting to fall”.
“There continue to be developments in LED lighting and HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning],” he notes, adding, “We also see that it is vital to have the right route to market and correctly sized farm so that the customer is able to sell out their capacity. Given the relatively commoditised elements in the market, matching capacity to demand is vital in an energy-intensive system.”
Indeed, in the vertical farming/hydroponics space it is already self-evident that technological advances and innovations are continually helping to mitigate capital costs and ongoing overheads. Moreover, the more these processes can be automated the better – not least because while capital costs go up because of the initial expenditure, the result is that fewer people are needed, going forward, meaning operating costs will come down longer term. Meanwhile, one desirable by-product of automation will be that it will provide a cleaner crop, due to the reduced contact between humans and crops.
In short, an industry now witnessing significant biological and technological innovation is well positioned to take advantage, longer term. The outstanding question though remains whether the UK government has the wherewithal to help accelerate this process. ●
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
mama_mia/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90
