New Mexico-based advanced materials company – UbiQD, Inc. – has been awarded a new small business contract by NASA, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for optimisation and scale up of extruded UbiGro® greenhouse films for boosting crop yield in both space and terrestrial applications. UbiGro Cover utilises a novel quantum dot (QD) polymer system developed by UbiQD that led to multiple orders of magnitude improved fluorescence sunlight durability. The company is licensing technology developed at leading research institutions, including Los Alamos National Laboratory and MIT. Historically, nanomaterials have struggled to survive the high temperatures needed for twin-screw…
Author: Matt Peskett
Matt Peskett
Matt has worked in digital publishing and media for over two decades across the science, technology, food and agricultural sectors. With a lifelong passion for growing his own food, Matt also produces 300kg giant pumpkins for exhibition and volunteers with the Royal Horticultural Society. He has a sizeable horticultural social media presence and has been a finalist in the Garden Media Guild's blog of the year and social media awards. Matt also dabbles in start-up investment with companies like Small Robot Company, Drone Ag and RootWave.
Planet Farms has appointed both a new CEO and President to guide the Italian vertical farming business through the next phase of its growth. Mara Lucilla Valsecchi joins as CEO and Marco Bordoli is appointed President. These two appointments take place as Planet Farms prepares to build a new farm that will cover an area of around 15000m² (roughly two football pitches). Founded in Milan in 2018 by Luca Travaglini and Daniele Benatoff, Planet Farms has an existing 9000m² farm to the North East of Milan in Cavenago di Brianza. It operates an innovative integrated growth process that starts with…
BIOS, a NASA spinoff and leader in human wellness and horticultural lighting technologies, has appointed Deepak Savadatti as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. With a background as a global business leader in the semiconductor and life sciences industries, Savadatti brings a wealth of leadership experience to broaden the worldwide presence of BIOS. Sean Tegart and Robert Soler co-founded BIOS in 2014. Tegart has taken on the new role of EVP of Business Development to scale sales while Soler, EVP of Biological Research and Technology, will continue to focus on new product innovations. BIOS horticulture lighting focuses on how plants…
Nouryon a global, specialty chemicals company, has invested in AGEYE Technologies, a technology company developing an automation platform for indoor farming. The AGEYE platform monitors individual plants around the clock and uses artificial intelligence to turn visual inputs into crop growth development insights and autonomous actions that improve the predictability and profitability of harvests for growers. AGEYE’s digital technology combines the principles of plant eco-physiology and precision farming to create an intelligent indoor farming platform that maximises ‘per plant’ growth rate, development, morphology, physiology, and ultimately improvement of crop yield, phytochemical content, and flavour. Growers can instantly access critical information…
‘Vertical Farms Company’, a joint venture between agritech companies YesHealth Group and Mowreq Specialized Agriculture, is to launch a network of indoor vertical farms throughout Saudi Arabia. The first of these farms is to be built in the capital Riyadh and with a 20,000 m² cultivation area it will be Saudi Arabia’s largest ever vertical farm. This first farm is set to be fully operational by Q4 2023, providing jobs and healthy, sustainable produce to the local community. The expected daily yield output of the Riyadh farm is 2,000kg, consisting of lettuces, cruciferous vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. In line with…
Desperate times call for desperate measures and at Infarm, Europe’s most highly funded vertical farming company, those measures involve the reduction of production sites and the laying off of ‘around 500 employees’. This will see Infarm cut half of its workforce only a year after it raised US$200 million in Series D funding. Faced with rising energy costs (doubled in Europe) and growing inflationary pressures, so soon after the logistical impacts of the global pandemic, Infarm’s management team has had to rapidly rethink its initial belt-tightening exercise of just 50 redundancies announced in September. ‘We must admit that our assessment…
A project focused on reducing the pathogen contamination of seeds used in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) has been successfully completed. It will see a reduction in the use of any chemicals used in CEA and open the door to new plant breeding options focused on flavour outcomes over disease resistance. London-based vertical farming technology and R&D company Vertical Future led the ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Heirloom Optimisation & Pathogen Control for Seeds’ or ‘CHOPS’ project alongside the NIAB and Zayndu Ltd. Research funding was provided by Innovate UK (the UK’s national innovation agency). Chemical free seed pre-treatment With the outer shell…
FarmBox Foods, a Colorado-based builder of controlled-climate container farms is set to grow trees in a Vertical Hydroponic Farm for CORE Electric Cooperative – a not-for-profit electric distribution cooperative. CORE plans to use the trees to rehabilitate forests within its service area, which covers 5,000 square miles along Colorado’s Front Range. The Vertical Hydroponic Farm will be housed inside an upcycled, insulated shipping container. Under the terms of the agreement, FarmBox Foods will operate the indoor tree farm at its home base in Sedalia and conduct research on drought resistance, nutrient dosing, lighting and other growing parameters. The trees will…
Which produces the best quality crop for the lowest amount of energy – an ultrasonic aeroponic system or a hydroponic irrigation system? Aeroponic technology specialists LettUs Grow (UK) have teamed up with Wageningen University and Research (NL) to answer this question in a trial that aims to boost the understanding of aeroponics in the available academic literature to encourage innovative agricultural practices in the future. LettUs Grow will be actively involved in the trial which is being conducted as a research collaboration project. Prof. Leo Marcelis, Professor of Horticulture and Product Physiology at Wageningen University, will be leading the trials…
US vertical farming company Kalera is now using an autonomous water monitoring solution from KETOS Inc to measure water quality in real-time across all of its vertical farming locations. KETOS SHIELD will be used across Kalera’s vertical farming operations to provide the firm with lab-accurate water quality data to support crop yield, managing nutrient concentration while being efficient with water reuse. As an enhancement to Kalera’s existing rigorous water quality testing processes, KETOS will automate water sampling and testing, offering actionable real-time data across Kalera’s network of farms. In addition, Kalera will be able to dial in nutrient solutions so…
