Advanced Growth Chamber for Rapid Optimisation of Vertical Farming Systems (AGROVerSe)

To meet the demands of a growing population, and to minimise the environmental cost of farming, there is an urgent and profound need to maximise the efficiency of crop production. Vertical farming, where crops are grown hydroponically indoors under artificial lighting and under precisely controlled environmental conditions, is a method of crop production that promises to be many hundreds of times more productive than traditional farming, and with less of an environmental impact. However, vertical farming today is nowhere near as efficient or productive as it could be, or as it needs to be. Because of this, most vertical farms are unprofitable, and often require more energy than traditional farming to produce the same amount of food.

One reason vertical farms are inefficient is that plant growth conditions, including light spectrum, temperature, and nutrition, have not been optimised for every crop. Finding the right plant growth conditions could mean increasing the yield of a crop by 15%, which in some crops could translate to a doubling of profit margins. Because light spectrum, temperature, and nutrition affect plant biochemical processes as well has plant yield, the right plant growth conditions for a medicinal plant grown in a vertical farm could mean the difference between a viable medicine and a wasted crop cycle.

Our solution to the problem of weak productivity and profitability in vertical farming is AGROVerSe, the Advanced Growth Chamber for Rapid Optimisation of Vertical Farming Systems. AGROVerSe is a system that lets vertical farmers and agronomists carry out large-scale, multi-chamber, multivariable experiments in order to identify plant growth conditions for maximum crop quality and yield.

AGROVerSe is a small, stackable, climate-controlled chamber that carries a number of innovative technologies. AGROVerSe has an advanced hyperspectral imaging system to continuously collect data on plant growth and development. It has a spectrum-tuneable LED lighting system, so that the effects of different light spectra on plant quality and yield can be examined. The chamber has a digitally-controlled hydroponics system, so that precise nutrient dosing can be carried out. Finally, an array of sensors continuously measures and feeds back to a novel HVAC system that precisely regulates temperature and humidity throughout the crop cycle. All of these components are connected together and controlled through a web-based platform, which collects and analyses data, and provides the user with plant growth conditions predicted to maximise crop quality and yield.