Plant Biology for Indoor Vertical Farming: A Multi-Discipline Approach to Controlled Environment Agriculture

To sustain global population growth in the context of climate change, global pandemics and political instabilities, agricultural food production needs to increase 70% by 2050. Such a challenge needs to be achieved while arable land per capita is decreasing and urbanization increasing. Over the past decade, vertical farming has emerged as a solution to regain areas of land where it was historically not possible to grow crops. In principle, by moving certain crop productions indoors in non-arable lands, vertical farming could be a major player in achieving food production sustainability. However, to date, crops grown in vertical farms are low-calory leafy greens and the science needed to bring vertical farming to the next level remains scarce and limited. The next generation of crops grown indoors will require in-depth research at the nexus between architecture, engineering, policy and plant science. In fact, vertical farming can build on a strong foundation of greenhouse and growth chamber research that can now be directly applied. This Research Topic focusses on understanding the fundamental research that applies directly to vertical farming and could contribute to its expansion.

Topics include:
- Improvement of crop yield through molecular and traditional breeding
- Plant physiology in a controlled environment (growth chamber, high-tech greenhouses, warehouses, etc…)
- Development of growth systems to improve crop yield
- Plant modeling in closed systems for predicting environmental impacts on plant production and resource use efficiency
- Resources utilization (nutrients, light, water, etc…) and efficiency

Keywords: Indoor vertical farming, Controlled environment agriculture, Indoor crop production, Agricultural food production, Food production sustainability, Greenhouse research, Growth chamber research

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