Vertical Farming Startup Oishii Raises $50m In Series A Funding

By Sian Yates

03/11/2021

Oishii, a vertical farming startup based in New Jersey, has raised $50 million during a Series A funding round led by Sparx Group’s Mirai Creation Fund II.

The funds will enable Oishii to open vertical strawberry farms in new markets, expand its flagship farm outside of Manhattan, and accelerate its investment in R&D.

“Our mission is to change the way we grow food. We set out to deliver exceptionally delicious and sustainable produce,” said Oishii CEO Hiroki Koga. “We started with the strawberry – a fruit that routinely tops the dirty dozen of most pesticide-riddled crops – as it has long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of vertical farming.”

“We aim to be the largest strawberry producer in the world, and this capital allows us to bring the best-tasting, healthiest berry to everyone. From there, we’ll quickly expand into new fruits and produce,” he added.

Oishii is already known for its innovative farming techniques that have enabled the company to “perfect the strawberry,” while its proprietary and first-of-its-kind pollination method is conducted naturally with bees.

The company’s vertical farms feature zero pesticides and produce ripe fruit all year round, using less water and land than traditional agricultural methods.

“Oishii is the farm of the future,” said Sparx Group president and Group CEO Shuhei Abe. “The cultivation and pollination techniques the company has developed set them well apart from the industry, positioning Oishii to quickly revolutionise agriculture as we know it.”

The company has raised a total of $55 million since its founding in 2016.

SPAIN: HPGen™ Improves Crop Yields, Reduces Irrigation System Maintenance In Almeria Greenhouse

Located in the highly productive greenhouse area in the Almeria region in southern Spain, a greenhouse grower with cucumbers in winter and watermelons in summer ran into some irrigation issues: the soil in the region is dry, the climate warm and the operators use organic fertilizers. The plants are grown in the typical Almeria sandy soil (enarenado) and are irrigated with a modern drip irrigation system using pressure compensating non-leakage drippers.

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When HPNow’s precision irrigation and agronomy experts assessed the site, it was clear that clogging of drippers leads to non-uniform irrigation and insufficient water and fertilizer delivery to part of the crop. To mitigate this, farm personnel were going through the drippers frequently to “unclog”, a manual process highly costly in man-hours.

Organic matter

Soil quality was also analyzed and the amount of organic matter in the soil, a critical parameter for the healthy growth of the plants, was very low at 0.33%. This is due to poor dissolution of organic matter fertilizers in water, which further exacerbates dripper clogging and decreases crop productivity. To overcome these issues, an HPGen™ system was installed and integrated with the drip irrigation system. The HPGen™ was installed in the irrigation room and set to automatically fill a buffer tank with Peroxide UltraPure™. Dosing was done through a proportional dosing pump, which is both simple and effective.

Improved yields

After a season of cucumber crop with HPGen™, yields were compared to previous seasons. The results with HPGen™ were of 17 kg/m2, a record for this grower, substantially higher than the average for the past 5 years of 12 kg/m2. In addition, the grower observed the quality of the fruit improved, and the fruit could remain on the plant longer, allowing for optimization in harvesting depending on market prices.

The improvement in >40% in production is explained by two factors:

·       Better irrigation uniformity: After two weeks of installing the HPGen™ all drippers showed a uniform water flow, which allows for an optimal distribution of water and fertilizer throughout the field.

·       Increase of soil organic content, which increased by a factor of 10 (from 0.33 to 4 %), which contributed to improving plant nutrition.

Both factors are due to the high oxidizing power of the Peroxide UltraPure™ generated by the HPGen™ system, which oxidizes organic matter in the irrigation system and makes it available to the crop. This results in better health and vigor of the plants, and in an improvement in yields.

About HPNow

HPNow addresses growing global challenges in clean water and sanitation through its range of on-site, autonomous, safe and sustainable hydrogen peroxide generation solutions. Headquartered in Copenhagen, and with representation across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, they address their clients’ water treatment needs in market segments ranging from agriculture and aquaculture, to industrial and drinking water treatment. HPNow is a technology and market leader in on-site generation of hydrogen peroxide and is continuously striving to further advance its technology and products in order to meet growing market needs and rising global demand.

Stay in the loop by following HPNow on LinkedIn and Facebook. 

Study On Analytic Tools To Measure Future Plants Stress

New work from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) highlights the potential of recently developed analytical tools that can provide tissue-cell or organelle-specific information on living plants in real-time and can be used on any plant species.

In a perspective paper titled “Species-independent analytical tools for next-generation agriculture” published in the journal Nature Plants, researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) within SMART review the development of two next-generation tools, engineered plant nanosensors and portable Raman spectroscopy, to detect biotic and abiotic stress, monitor plant hormonal signalling, and characterize soil, phytobiome, and crop health in a non- or minimally invasive manner. The researchers discuss how the tools bridge the gap between model plants in the laboratory and field application for agriculturally relevant plants. The paper also assesses the future outlook, economic potential, and implementation strategies for the integration of these technologies in future farming practices.

Crop loss
An estimated 11-30 per cent yield loss of five major crops of global importance (wheat, rice, maize, potato, and soybean) is caused by crop pathogens and insects, with the highest crop losses observed in regions already suffering from food insecurity. Against this backdrop, research into innovative technologies and tools is required for sustainable agricultural practices to meet the rising demand for food and food security — an issue that has drawn the attention of governments worldwide due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sensors
Plant nanosensors, developed at SMART DiSTAP, are nanoscale sensors, smaller than the width of a hair, that can be inserted into the tissues and cells of plants to understand complex signalling pathways. Portable Raman spectroscopy, also developed at SMART DiSTAP, encompases a laser-based device that measures molecular vibrations induced by laser excitation, providing highly specific Raman spectral signatures that provide a fingerprint of a plant’s health. These tools are able to monitor stress signals in short time-scales, ranging from seconds to minutes, which allows for early detection of stress signals in real-time.

“The use of plant nanosensors and Raman spectroscopy has the potential to advance our understanding of crop health, behavior, and dynamics in agricultural settings,” says Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew SM '18, PhD '20, the paper’s first author. “Plants are highly complex machines within a dynamic ecosystem, and a fundamental study of its internal workings and diverse microbial communities of its ecosystem is important to uncover meaningful information that will be helpful to farmers and enable sustainable farming practices. These next-generation tools can help answer a key challenge in plant biology, which is to bridge the knowledge gap between our understanding of model laboratory-grown plants and agriculturally-relevant crops cultivated in fields or production facilities.”

Early detection
Early plant stress detection is key to timely intervention and increasing the effectiveness of management decisions for specific types of stress conditions in plants. Tools capable of studying plant health and reporting stress events in real-time will benefit both plant biologists and farmers. Data obtained from these tools can be translated into useful information for farmers to make management decisions in real-time to prevent yield loss and reduced crop quality.

The species-independent tools also offer new plant science study opportunities for researchers. In contrast to conventional genetic engineering techniques that are only applicable to model plants in laboratory settings, the new tools apply to any plant species, which enables the study of agriculturally relevant crops previously understudied. Adopting these tools can enhance researchers’ basic understanding of plant science and potentially bridge the gap between model and non-model plants.

Technologies in agriculture
“The SMART DiSTAP interdisciplinary team facilitated the work for this paper and we have both experts in engineering new agriculture technologies and potential end-users of these technologies involved in the evaluation process,” says Professor Michael Strano, the paper’s co-corresponding author, DiSTAP co-lead principal investigator, and the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “It has been the dream of an urban farmer to continually, at all times, engineer optimal growth conditions for plants with precise inputs and tightly controlled variables. These tools open the possibility of real-time feedback control schemes that will accelerate and improve plant growth, yield, nutrition, and culinary properties by providing optimal growth conditions for plants in the future of urban farming.”

“To facilitate widespread adoption of these technologies in agriculture, we have to validate their economic potential and reliability, ensuring that they remain cost-efficient and more effective than existing approaches,” the paper’s co-corresponding author, DiSTAP co-lead principal investigator, and deputy chair of TLL Professor Chua Nam Hai explains. “Plant nanosensors and Raman spectroscopy would allow farmers to adjust fertilizer and water usage, based on internal responses within the plant, to optimize growth, driving cost efficiencies in resource utilization. Optimal harvesting conditions may also translate into higher revenue from increased product quality that customers are willing to pay a premium for.”

Collaboration among engineers, plant biologists, and data scientists, and further testing of new tools under field conditions with critical evaluations of their technical robustness and economic potential will be important in ensuring sustainable implementation of technologies in tomorrow’s agriculture.

For more information:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
www.mit.edu 

(Assistant) Professor Crop Modelling In Greenhouses And Vertical Farms (Tenure Track)

The chair group Horticulture and Product Physiology of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is keen to hire an Assistant Professor (0.7-1.0 ft). As an Assistant Professor, you will take a leading role in developing research and education and the opportunity to establish your own research and education in crop modeling in greenhouses and vertical farms.

This position also involves experimental physiological work at the plant organ, whole plant or whole crop level, which is necessary to build, calibrate and validate models.

In this challenging career trajectory:

• You will perform research on modeling, combined with experimentation, of growth, development, and quality of horticultural crops and products (vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, and/or pot plants).

• You acquire, lead and implement together with the chair holder and other staff members innovative and creative (inter-)national research projects for our group. Once acquired you also implement and lead these projects.

• You supervise Ph.D., MSc, and BSc students, and you will develop and teach courses (lectures, practicals) on the modeling of key plant processes in greenhouses and vertical farms.

• Your work will focus on the development of models, which are a combination of multiscale Spatio-temporal data-driven, as well as knowledge-based models. Model applications may include predictions of yield, plant development and growth, quality, post-harvest behavior, resource use and running costs for crops grown in greenhouses and vertical farms

• You collaborate with colleagues and establish a personal research portfolio that is embedded in the Horticulture and Product Physiology group

• You undertake research on modeling and data analytics, combined with experimentation, that leads to high-quality research output.

• You will perform research on modeling, combined with experimentation, of growth, development, and quality of horticultural crops and products (vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, and/or pot plants).

Tenure Track is a career path for scientists who pursue to excel in education and research. We seek to attract scientific talent and to stimulate and support their development.

Requirements:

• You hold a Ph.D. degree in plant science, mathematical science, biological science, data science, or similar.

• You have experience in modeling and data analytics, as well as a keen interest in combining these activities with experimentation with plants.

• You have published research in high-quality journals and are willing to develop your skills in teaching and grant proposal acquisition.

• You are strong in stakeholder management because you need to communicate the importance and significance of your research.

• This position requires excellent English language proficiency (a minimum of CEFR C2 level). For more information about this proficiency level, please visit our special language page.

The chair group Horticulture & Product Physiology
The chair group Horticulture and Product Physiology conduct high impact research and educate students providing the scientific basis required to answer questions that are of utmost importance for sustainable crop production and product quality in horticulture.
The research focus is on how physiological processes in crops, plants, and plant organs interact with the abiotic environment and how this affects crop production and product quality. Questions arising from horticultural practice are translated into fundamental research topics, aiming to explain mechanisms. The research and education contribute to sustainably feeding the World with healthy high-quality products.
The chair group is an international team consisting of 15 permanent staff members, about 25 Ph.D. candidates and postdocs, and a number of guest researchers. Each year about 40 MSc students conduct their thesis study (6-month research) at our group. We organize and participate in a variety of courses for BSc and MSc students to transfer knowledge on horticulture (pre-and post-harvest), environmental physiology, and product quality.
More info about the chair group can be found at www.hpp.wur.nl or see the video below:

Salary Benefits:

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement:

• sabbatical leave, study leave, and paid parental leave;

• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;

• the option to accrue additional flexible hours by working more, up to 40 hours per week;

• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;

• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;

• excellent ABP pension regulations.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will be offered a fixed-term, 7-year contract which, upon positive evaluation based on criteria elaborated in the University's Tenure Track policy, can lead to a permanent employment contract as a professor. Depending on your experience, we offer a competitive salary of between € 3.746,- and € 5.127,- (assistant professor position) for a full-time working week of 38 hours in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreements for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU) (scale 11). The position can be part-time or full-time (0.7-1.0 ft).
Wageningen University & Research encourages internal advancement opportunities and mobility with an internal recruitment policy. There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a unique position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.
You are going to work at the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and at a university that has been chosen as the "Best University" in the Netherlands for the 16th consecutive time.

Coming from abroad
Wageningen University & Research is the university and research center for life sciences. The themes we deal with are relevant to everyone around the world and Wageningen, therefore, has a large international community and a lot to offer to international employees. Applicants from abroad moving to the Netherlands may qualify for special tax relief, known as the 30% ruling. Our team of advisors on Dutch immigration procedures will help you with the visa application procedures for yourself and, if applicable, for your family.
Feeling welcome also has everything to do with being well informed. Wageningen University & Research's International Community page contains practical information about what we can do to support international employees and students coming to Wageningen. Furthermore, we can assist you with any additional advice and information about helping your partner to find a job, housing, schooling, and other issues.

Work Hours: 38 hours per week

Address: Droevendaalsesteeg

This Startup Wants Vertical Farmers To Hire A Robot Gardener

Lucas Ropek

Arugula micro greens are grown at AeroFarms on February 19, 2019, in Newark, New Jersey.

Photo: Photo by Angela Weiss (Getty Images)

In recent years, vertical farming has emerged as a futurist’s solution to the world’s agricultural problems. The growing trend seeks to use controlled environments to boost food production, leveraging indoor labs where temperature, light, and nutrients can be mechanically controlled.

Yet while vertical farms have gained in popularity, they are also still very expensive. When compared to conventional farming, these farms necessitate the purchase of pricey equipment to aid human labor—a fact that, when paired with other economic pressures, has apparently led to an industry “littered with bankruptcies.”

One company hopes to change this dire picture. Enter Watney the robot.

Watney was designed by start-up Seasony. The company, which was featured today at this year’s Alchemist Accelerator’s Demo Day, has sought to make the tech-farming trend more accessible by automating away some of the more difficult labor involved.

Image: Screenshot: Youtube/TV2LORRY

“By automating the production with robotics and remote monitoring, we can lower labor costs and offer solutions for food producers that is economically viable and environmentally sustainable,” the company claims on their website.

Indeed, Watney is designed to augment (and, in many ways, replace) a human labor force—currently one of the biggest expenditures for vertical farms. Essentially an intelligent, automated cart, the robot was designed to “move and transport plant trays” within a farming hub. In techno-jargon, it is an autonomous mobile manipulation robot (AMMR), a type of machine known for moving and manipulating items on its own. It is also equipped with a camera that captures image data and sends it back to farm management software for human analysis. Watney also gathers valuable horticultural data to help farmers optimize yields, said Christopher Weis Thomasen, Seasony’s CEO and Co-Founder, in an email.

From left to right: Erkan Tosti Taskiran, Servet Coskun and Christopher Weis Thomasen.

Photo: Photo from Seasony.

“We are doing for vertical farming what the integration of autonomous mobile robots did to amazon. We are able to decrease the costs of growing food in a vertical farm by alleviating the logistics pains of working from scissor lifts,” said Thomasen.

Thomasen, a mechanical engineer, and his two co-founders electrical engineer Servet Coskun and business specialist Erkan Tosti Taskiran, were inspired to create the business while brainstorming what it would take to sustain life in outer space (Watney the robot is named after Mark Watney, the astronaut in the movie The Martian, who, after being stranded on the Red Planet, fertilizes potatoes with his own poop to survive).

“It quickly evolved to Seasony setting up a vertical farming lab and exploring the technical challenges facing the new industry. Reducing the costs related to labor is key in order to scale vertical farming and make agriculture more sustainable,” Thomasen said.

There is, of course, some debate in the farming community about the social costs incurred through the large-scale displacement of human labor.

Presumably, we will have to wait to see what that cost-saving process looks like. Seasony, which is still getting off the ground, plans to do a pilot trial with the largest vertical farm in Europe in April. It has plans to conduct further testing with several smaller vertical farms, as well, Thomasen said.

Lucas Ropek

Posts Twitter

Staff writer at Gizmodo

December Indoor Science Cafe Recording Is Now Available!

"Crop Growth Monitoring and

Simulation-Based Resource Use Optimization"

by KC Shasteen & Murat Kacira (University of Arizona)

This presentation 'Crop Growth Monitoring and Simulation-Based Resource Use Optimization' was given by Dr. Murat Kacira and KC Shasteen (University of Arizona) during our 25th cafe forum on December 8th, 2020.

Cafe Archive & QA Forum

Our archived Indoor Ag Science Cafe page in OptimIA website now has a forum function!  Please click on presentations of your interest and ask your quick questions. Notifications come to us and we should be able to respond promptly. 

Submit Your General Questions For 'Indoor Ag Sci Queries'!

Please submit your questions (anonymously if you wish) about sciences and technologies of indoor farming to this submission site.  Any questions are welcome! The site is always open for your questions. Selected questions will be discussed in our future Indoor Ag Science Queries series.

How Can Crop Production Data Advance The Controlled Environment Agriculture Industry?

The Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project aims to advance controlled environment research, machine learning, and artificial intelligence through the collection and dissemination of crop production data.

by By David Kuack

There is a considerable amount of data being generated by both private companies and university researchers when it comes to controlled environment crop production. This data is being generated for ornamentals, food crops, and cannabis. One of the questions about all this data is whether it is being used to its maximum potential to benefit the horticulture industry.

“Data has become a big topic in the horticulture industry with university researchers and private companies,” said Erico Mattos, executive director of the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium. “People can identify with the challenges and opportunities with the amount of data that is being generated. However, we don’t yet have a centralized repository and a standard methodology for storage to allow us to explore and exploit this data.”

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The formation of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project aims to promote crop production data sharing from universities and private companies to accelerate CEA research.

Addressing the data proliferation
In 2018 during the North Central Extension & Research Activity–101 (NCERA-101) meeting members of this USDA-organized committee discussed what should be done with the extensive amount of data being generated by controlled environment researchers. Ohio State University professor Chieri Kubota proposed the formation of a sub-committee to address the need to develop guidelines for sharing data generated by controlled environment agriculture researchers.

“Dr. Kubota initiated the discussion about the need for a centralized platform to store data collected from controlled environment research,” Mattos said. “A task force was formed that included Chieri, Kale Harbick at USDA-ARS, Purdue University professor Yang Yang, Melanie Yelton at Plenty and myself. Since the task force was formed Ken Tran at Koidra and Timothy Shelford at Cornell University have also become members of the task force.

“We started discussing how we could make use of all this data. Researchers in the United States collect a huge amount of data. All of the environmental data such as temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide and light levels in controlled environment research is collected. There is also a biological set of data which includes plant biomass and fruit yield.”

Mattos said there is also a great deal of research data generated and collected by private companies that is not shared with the horticulture industry.

“With the advancement in sensors and environmental controls, the capability now exists that this data can be collected,” he said. “With the advancements in computing power, this data can be used to start new applications and new tools that haven’t been available before. However, in order to do this, we have to have access to a large amount of data. That’s why the task force thought it would be good to create a repository where researchers and private companies could share the data following a specific format. This data could then be used in the advancement of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to optimize crop yields in commercial CEA operations.”

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An increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring researchers include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.

Need for collecting and organizing data
Mattos said university researchers see the value in creating a centralized database.

“There are probably millions of data points when you consider how many researchers are doing research in the U.S.,” he said. “Historically these researchers have not been required to share their data. However, an increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring that researchers share their data. If researchers apply for a grant from USDA, they are required to include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.

“Researchers see the value of sharing this data, but this is not a common practice which involves allocating time and resources. This means someone on their research team would have to organize and share the data. There are probably millions of data points (big data) when you consider how many horticulture researchers there are in the U.S.”

 Creating a central database
Based on the need for collecting and organizing the controlled environment research data that is being generated, the task force established the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project [https://ceaod.github.io/]. The project aims to promote data sharing to accelerate CEA research.

The CEAOD website provides guidelines on how to upload the data. The task force developed the guidelines, which include three sets of data that can be uploaded to the website.

“One set is environmental data, including environmental controlled parameters such as temperature, carbon dioxide, relative humidity, and ventilation,” he said. “These data points are usually collected automatically by sensors. Another set of data is biological data, which is usually collected by humans. These biomass production yield parameters include shoot and root biomass and plant height and weight. The final document is the metadata which are descriptions of the experimental setups and data sets. It is a file that explains the experiments. It describes how the experiments were done.

“There is a certain format that is recommended to be followed to upload the data on the CEAOD website. The step-by-step process is listed on the website. There are no restrictions on which crops the data can be submitted. Our goal is to establish a platform to host a large number of crop production data sets to allow for the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms aimed at improving crop production efficiency.”

Leading by example
This winter GLASE will have a student collecting and organizing environmental and biological research data.

“The data will be uploaded to the CEAOD database and we will be documenting these activities,” Mattos said. “We will create a guideline of recommendations. We also plan to work with researchers from other institutions to demonstrate how the data can be organized and uploaded to create awareness and how to use the database.

“We hope this initial GLASE contribution will incentivize other researchers to share their data and will facilitate the uploading process. Access to the CEAOD database is free. It is an open platform and anyone can contribute to the development of this database tool.”

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Once research data is collected and available for dissemination, the equipment used to produce controlled environment crops will be able to optimize the environmental conditions for a wide variety of crops, including lettuce, tomatoes, and cannabis.

Benefits to the horticulture industry
Mattos said private companies would also benefit from the collection of data and creating a centralized database.

“These companies need more data because it would allow them to analyze the data to develop new products and identify new markets,” he said. “Unfortunately, many of these companies don’t want to share their data. They are very proprietary about their data. They see that collecting and analyzing this data can put them ahead of their competition.

“Many private companies see the need for more data and how it can be valuable but are unwilling to share their own data. But like in other industries there are early adopters. I believe there will be companies that step up and will share their data with the horticulture industry. Hopefully, industry people will be willing to contribute and work on this database as well.”

Mattos said one of the big applications with this project is related to machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“With these applications, large sets of data are needed in order to create baselines,” he said. “Using the data, machines can be taught. Currently, growers’ production knowledge and opinion are more accurate for growing crops than artificial intelligence predictions. Growers are still more reliable, but it is just a matter of time before the use of big data and artificial intelligence will be able to match the growers in regards to optimizing growth.

“We are trying to develop this platform between the growers and controlled environment researchers and the machine learning/data computer scientists. I’m not sure the controlled environment researchers have grasped the potential that is available. We are not using this technology. Establishing this platform, as we collect and disseminate the data, there is real potential to help the advancement of the horticulture industry.”

For more: Erico Mattos, Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE), (302) 290-1560; em796@cornell.edu.

More info on CEAOD
Want to learn more about the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project? Then check out these two upcoming events.

Aug. 4, 2-3 p.m. EDT
GLASE webinar: Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project. Presented by Erico Mattos, executive director of GLASE, and Kenneth Tran, founder of Koidra LLC.

Aug. 13, 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. EDT
American Society for Horticultural Science presentation: The Promise of Big Data and New Technologies in Controlled Environment Agriculture. Presented by Erico Mattos.

David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.

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