Optimising the propagation environment in TCEA systems to maximise strawberry yield potential in all production systems

Ensuring food and nutrition security has been a constant struggle throughout human history, but perhaps never more so than now with a rapidly increasing global population (estimated to reach 9.7bn by 2050), the current challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and more locally, the legacy effects of BREXIT. Traditional production methods will be unable to meet these challenges, and so new innovation and technologies must be developed to provide food security worldwide - one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG2). New ways of growing fresh, nutritious, food with an assured shelf-life using fewer inputs and from a smaller area, and in more sustainable and cost-effective ways which circumvent limiting factors such as climate, land-use pressure, and inflationary costs are needed.

Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) is a promising method of growing plants that is not coupled with weather or land, and could contribute to long-term resilience and self-sufficiency targets. The global vertical farming technology market is valued at £3.12bn, and is estimated to reach £16.77bn by 2027, 23.28% CAGR (Verified Market Research, 2020). Drivers of this growth are the high yield potentials, year-round production, hyper-local production, reduced food-miles and storage requirements, shorter supply chain, use of less water and fertilisers, and minimum agrochemicals. While most vertical farming companies grow leafy greens and salads, there is an opportunity to utilise this technology for other high value horticultural crops such as berries and transplants, larger vegetables and root crops, and plant-based pharmaceuticals and proteins.

We will develop a method to produce high quality, virus-and disease-free strawberry plant propagules with assured high cropping potential in TCEA. The resulting pre-programmed, high-health plant material will enable import substitution of both propagules and fruit (currently £40m and £186M per year), reduce chemical inputs and waste (currently £30m/year), and deliver a product that will provide value and security for growers, when planted in conventional polytunnel systems, glasshouses (CEA) or TCEA.

To achieve these outputs, we have assembled a multi-disciplinary and collaborative consortium led by Vertical Future (a leading vertical farming technology and research company) with NIAB East Malling (the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture), the University of Reading, leading strawberry growers Hugh Lowe Farms and Clock House Farm, and their propagation companies (Blaise Plants and Linton Growing, respectively), the leading UK marketing desk Berry Gardens Growers Ltd, Delta-T Devices (agri-tech sensor manufacturer) and Cocogreen (specialist substrate supplier).