10068669GyroPlant- Making TCEA farms sustainableClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe Challenge: To meet global and local climate targets, industries must radically transform to more efficient and sustainable ways of working. **GyroPlant is addressing some of the inefficiencies in Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) and has developed an innovation to deal with growing waste in indoor farms.** TCEA is the practice of growing crops where traditional soil is replaced with alternative substrates. This has advantages, such as growing food in less space, reliable year-round production, no use of chemicals or pesticides, water savings of up to 90% and food production much closer to the consumer. However currently, non-reusable growing substrates, such as pots or matting, are used to grow plants. These substrates are made of materials such as rockwool, a 'candy-floss' like sponge made from rock, and plastic pots, similar to those seen in garden centres. They are non-reusable and non-recyclable, which means once the plants are harvested these substrates are thrown away - making these growing practices less environmentally friendly. Some large farms can have millions of plants, which means millions of single-use substrate cubes thrown away - often weekly. Our response: The energy, transportation emissions, labour and disposal processes that go into substrates are far from sustainable. Some organic alternatives such as bark and coconut husk are available, however they are expensive, unreliable and allow contaminants to grow. At GyroPlant, we saw this as a rather large issue, similar to the issue of disposable coffee cups which has recently undergone public scrutiny. **GyroPlant has designed a patented novel reusable rubber cup, _GyroCup_, which replaces substrates and addresses the issue of growing substrate waste in agriculture.** Our technology is a simple silicone rubber plug that you place seeds in with some water based gel, compatible with most vertical farming set-ups. GyroPlant has been researching and testing GyroCup over the past year with assistance from Innovate UK and KTN through the Innovate UK Young Innovator, Continuation Fund and Design Foundations awards. The project: In this project, we are testing the potential of water-based growing substates, such as gels, in combination with GyroCup. These gels are only used in the germination stage and are a substantially cheaper and more sustainable alternative to the most commonly used substrates in the TCEA market. As a result of this project, **we aim to bring this new sustainable approach using gel-based media and GyroCup to the market, making the TCEA sector more self-sufficient and sustainable.**