Harnessing the power of the microbiome to establish world-leading Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) capacity

Total controlled-environment agriculture (TCEA) is a novel food production system that offers a sustainable and scalable alternative to traditional soil-based agriculture. Although immune to many soil diseases, TCEA systems remain susceptible to plant pathogens, with outbreaks causing catastrophic impacts since pathogens (particularly water-borne pathogens) can spread easily and affect entire crops. In addition, rigorous TCEA cleaning and sanitising protocols employed to eliminate human and plant pathogens also eliminate beneficial microbes. These beneficial microbes, widespread in soil but often eradicated in the soilless context of TCEA, are increasingly recognised as performing a vital role in plant performance in terms of both yield and quality.

Concert Bio is developing a microbiome optimisation platform for TCEA growers, which combines next-generation sequencing-based monitoring with environmental and probiotic interventions to maximise resource-efficient, low-emission TCEA crop production and minimise wasted operational costs through improving productivity, sustainability, and resilience. Our academic partner Professor Thomas Bell is a world expert in microbial ecology, whose research focuses on understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that modify microbial communities and make them susceptible to invasion. He is also the Founder and Director of the £10m Leverhulme Centre for the Holobiont at Imperial College London.

Innovate UK funding supports the development of a new formal collaborative R&D relationship between Concert Bio and Imperial College London, combining Concert Bio's expertise in TCEA microbiome sequencing and biocomputational modelling with Professor Thomas Bell's expertise in studying microbial community invasions.

The project timeliness is extremely high, with the energy crisis placing further pressure on TCEA growers to increase productivity, profitability, and resilience in the face of rising operational costs. The UK is uniquely placed to take a global leadership position in TCEA, benefitting from a strong academic research base in microbiome science and already home to several of the world's largest TCEA farms.

Although we will expand the developed microbiome monitoring and optimisation service across leafy greens, microgreens, and herbs, we have chosen lettuce as our target study crop because of:

(i) Market relevance: Lettuce accounts for approximately 20% of the global TCEA market.

(ii) Food safety criticality: Lettuce and other leafy greens have been linked to multiple E. coli outbreaks worldwide, causing illness and deaths.

(iii) High risk of water-borne pathogens: Root diseases cause global TCEA lettuce crop losses of up to 30%.

(iv) Rapid seed-to-harvest time: TCEA lettuce benefits from year-round growing season and 20-day seed-to-harvest time, enabling efficient optimisation of probiotic interventions.