The Pollination Pickle of Indoor Farming

New Post On Shubham Khoje

by Shubham

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how the farms in the future could go indoors. I had looked at some of the pros and cons of indoor farming and had barely scratched the surface. So I dived a little deeper and found this really interesting challenge as the nascent indoor farming industry moves forward.

Pollinators like bees, birds, and bats account for 35% of the world's current food production, so every third bite of food you eat, thank the pollinators. In the US, these pollinators alone contribute to over $18 billion in the production of over 100 crops every year. Pollination of some form is vital for 75% of the major food crops of the world including apples, almonds, coffee, and many more. In short, pollination is essential to growing food and ultimately for the survival of human beings.

Source: Flower vector created by brgfx - www.freepik.com

But what does pollination have to do with indoor farms?

A majority of the indoor farming companies, be it greenhouses or vertical farms, are focused on growing leafy greens like lettuce, kale, arugula, etc. using either hydroponics, aquaponics, or their hybrid versions. To build these farms you need a lot of cash upfront. The short growth cycles and relative ease of growing these leafy greens are what makes them lucrative to cover the high capital costs.

Stephen Pankhurst in his video explains how there would be three phases of indoor farming, the leafy greens marking the first phase of this industry.

• Phase I - Leafy Greens

• Phase II - Roots and Fruits

• Phase III - Staple Crops

So far, the indoor farming companies have researched and worked towards improving their leafy green growing recipes. They have built software for controlling and optimizing the light, water, wind, and now adding AI to the mix gives them a head start. Having mastery of Phase I has given them the courage to venture further into Phase II, growing fruits.

The big guns of vertical farming like Plenty are already stepping up their game. With their $140 million series D funding, they have partnered with Driscolls, the company that controls 1/3rd of the U.S berry market, to expand into growing strawberries.

But in order to grow fruits, the flowers need to be pollinated. When you try to grow fruits in an indoor farm, which is a closed environment with no access to bees and birds, the biggest challenge would be the pollination process.

The pollination pickle

The main purpose of automating any process is to reduce laborious tasks and make machines do our bidding. Indoor farming companies love to automate their processes, from machines that help the seeding process to automatic conveyors that move the racks for growing the greens, and ultimately robots that harvest the leafy green produce.

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In the natural world, however, the labor-intensive task of pollination is left to the wind, birds, and the bees at no cost to us. But with the indoor farms that are spread over millions of square feet either horizontally or vertically, natural pollination becomes a problem. So as we move indoors, some efforts are being made to build tech for reducing the efforts needed for the pollination process.

Tomatoes, for example, are self-pollinating, meaning, the pollen needs to fall inside the flower itself to pollinate and develop into a fruit. But the pollen needs to be "shaken" to fall down, usually, the bees help the tomato plant. But in a greenhouse or an indoor farm, hand pollination with electrical wands replaces the humming of the bees to pollinate the tomatoes. Humans have to move from flower to flower on a scissor lift, making sure the pollination is done on all the flowers. From passionfruit in Brazil, tomatoes in the USA, and eggplants in Nederlands that are grown indoors are hand-pollinated, a tedious and labor-intensive task indeed.

A new approach is being taken by companies like Polybee that are developing drones small enough to fly from flower to flower and pollinate them. The Israeli company Edete has automated almond pollination by using lasers to locate the almond flowers and blow pollen into them. Although almonds are an outdoor crop, the breakthrough technology could someday be possibly used for indoor farms.

Oishii, a New Jersey-based indoor farm, on the other hand, is playing a different ball game altogether, they are growing world class Omakase strawberries that sell for $5 for a single strawberry. Unlike any other indoor farm, they have mastered the technology of using bees to pollinate their fruit and just closed a $50 million Series A funding to expand their farms. They are also at par with using robots for automating their other process. I believe this to be a step in the right direction.

In conclusion, the indoor farming industry that is focused on growing leafy greens is venturing into growing fruits. They have brought down power consumption with energy-saving LEDs, reduced manpower by automating all the processes, built high precision software to help monitor and improve the growth and yield of their produce. Surely, these technological advancements will help them move forward into the next phase, but to scale up the second phase to the humongous levels of Phase I, the industry will have to solve this pollination pickle.

To automate or not to automate the pollination process, that is the question.

P.S: There is an episode on the dystopian Netflix series "Black Mirror", about how in the future, autonomous drone bees built to replace the extinct natural bees, takes a turn for the worse and ends up killing people.

https://shubhamkhoje.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/pexels-videos-4408-1.mp4

Signify and RIAT Pioneer Growing Tomatoes and Cucumbers In A Vertical Farm Without Daylight

April 30, 2020

Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Signify (Euronext: LIGHT), the world leader in lighting, and RIAT, an innovative farming enterprise located in Russia, have together pioneered the growing of tomatoes and cucumbers in a vertical farm without daylight. During the research phase in 2019, RIAT achieved a yield comparable to advanced traditional greenhouses using Philips GreenPower LED grow lights.

We already had facilities of sufficient height at our disposal, therefore there was no need to invest in building a glass construction. But as the building had no windows, we needed a high-quality lighting system to fulfill the intensive lighting requirements of tomatoes and cucumbers. In 2019, Signify provided its Philips GreenPower LED grow lighting, helping us to achieve a yield performance comparable to traditional greenhouse operations."

Vladimir Bukharev

Director at RIAT

RIAT’s indoor farm is located in the center of the Ivanovo region, enabling the company to distribute its tomatoes, cucumbers and 19 types of green crops to its own RIAT stores within an hour after harvesting. RIAT has a special technique to fold the long stems, allowing it to grow the 3.5m high plants indoors.

“With a harvest of 2.7 to 3.2 kg of cucumbers per m2 every week, and 1.7 kg per m2 of tomatoes, we started making a profit as of the second year of operation,” Bukharev added. “In addition to that, the quality of the product is very high, there’s hardly any waste and we sell 99% of what is being grown.”

“To mimic nature as much as possible, RIAT has chosen a combination of different kinds of Philips GreenPower LED toplighting and interlighting, bringing light both from the top and right in the canopy where the light is needed the most for photosynthesis. While using different kinds of lights, the light recipe can be adjusted based on the crop that is grown,” said Sergey Khokhrin, business Development Manager CEE/Russia & CIS at Signify.

Signify, in collaboration with several research partners, discovered that the red spectrum in light stimulates growth of plant cells and tissues, while the blue spectrum influences the processes of cytodifferentiation (racemes initiation, bines and root formation, flowering). The combination of red and blue with the addition of white and other colors in Philips LED grow lights creates lighting conditions that are as close to natural daylight as possible. Additionally, RIAT is using bumblebees for pollination, as in traditional greenhouses. The bees don’t experience difficulties due to the absence of natural light.

When choosing a lighting supplier, RIAT tested LED modules from different manufacturers from around the globe. “By using Philips LED lighting modules, we managed to achieve maximum stability and a light output of 18 g/mol. This is why we chose Signify. The area equipped with LED lamps is currently 3,800 m2. Soon, we are going to launch a new area of 700 m2 to grow lettuce which will also be equipped with Philips LED lighting,” Bukharev added.

For further information, please contact:

Global Marcom Manager Horticulture at Signify

Daniela Damoiseaux

Tel: +31 6 31 65 29 69

E-mail: daniela.damoiseaux@signify.com

www.philips.com/horti

Signify Corporate Communications and Government Affairs in Russia
and CIS

Natalia Neverskaya

Tel.: +7 (495) 937-93-30; fax +7 (495) 937-93-59

E-mail: natalia.neverskaya@signify.com

About Signify 

Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) is the world leader in lighting for professionals and consumers and lighting for the Internet of Things. Our Philips products, Interact connected lighting systems and data-enabled services, deliver business value and transform life in homes, buildings and public spaces. With 2019 sales of EUR 6.2 billion, we have approximately 38,000 employees and are present in over 70 countries. We unlock the extraordinary potential of light for brighter lives and a better world. We have been named Industry Leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for three years in a row. News from Signify is located at the Newsroom, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Information for investors can be found on the Investor Relations page.