CEA Heirloom Optimisation & Pathogen Control for Seeds (CHOPS)

Conventional and organic agriculture are highly dependent on various agro-chemicals to ensure that field grown crops are free from disease and satisfy production volume needs. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) has moved growing crops for consumption away from fields and the disease pressures that come from the open air and soils. This has massively reduced the need for agro-chemicals but there is still some way to go.

It is still uneconomical to produce seeds in CEA facilities and so these are produced outside. The result is that the outer shell of the seed is now the main source of diseases that enter CEA production. When a disease takes hold in CEA, it can be devastating as the conditions that a plant thrives in, are the same as those a fungus or bacteria will. It is possible to treat seeds with agro-chemicals to remove these pathogens, but that is not desirable for both environmental and consumer driven needs. One of the focuses of our project is to scale up and further develop a non-chemical seed pre-treatment method that uses only air and electricity to kill any fungi or bacteria on the surface of the seed without harming the embryonic plant contained within it.

Reducing the disease pressure isn't all that is needed. As many crops have been extensively bred and selected for field growth, the key characteristics that breeders have focused on are generally to make the plant resistant to diseases which reduces crop losses for the farmer. As these characteristics are less important to CEA, we can take this opportunity to select varieties that have better characteristics for the grower and the consumer such as higher yielding, more nutrient dense varieties. We will do this by carrying out crop trials as well as using DNA sequencing techniques to allow us to pinpoint molecular signposts in the genetic code of CEA suitable varieties. By looking at the DNA, we will be able to translate our discoveries in spinach into other plants more easily.

When these two approaches are combined, a more nutritious, CEA focused crop can be grown free from threat of disease and use of agro-chemicals.

The advances made within the project will also benefit the UK economy as well as the consumer as the partners that have come together also market technology and solutions to the global agricultural industry.