Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Controlled environment agriculture (CEA), or the production of food crops in greenhouses and indoor spaces, is expected to increase 5-fold in market size over the next ten years. CEA increases food security and reduces the number of miles that food needs to travel before it reaches consumers' plates. It also helps produce more fresh fruits and vegetables on a year-round basis, thus helping reduce nutritional insecurity. Despite these benefits, CEA infrastructure is a massive energy consumer and, in its current form, is fundamentally incompatible with a low carbon economy. Much of this energy is used for climate control, artificial lighting, and chemical fertilizer. Our team's long-term goal is to transform CEA strategically, managerially, technologically, and socially to reposition it as a viable food production system capable of producing sufficient and nutritious foods within the low-carbon economy. This project is supported by the CEA industry: a comprehensive survey of 35 horticulture producers reveals strong interest in sustainable practices, water quality and quantity, and labor shortages. This project is informed by an advisory board composed of stakeholders representing both production agriculture and CEA equipment vendors.Our long-term objectives are to 1) Reduce the demand for heating and cooling in CEA food production environments, 2) Improve the overall efficiency of CEA climate-controlled environments, 3) Lower the carbon intensity of resource inputs, and 4) Shift consumer and producer behavior surrounding CEA products and practices. To this end, we are engaging in research, education, and outreach activities in a wide range of fields including plant biology, horticulture, biosystems engineering, computer science, and economics. The outcome of this multi-discipline approach will be to create new breeds of plants that are more tolerant to extreme temperatures and cropping strategies that lower energy demand. Additional benefits include the demonstrated use of bioenergy and wastewater for plant production, optimal greenhouse control strategies, education of current and future producers, and insights into how consumers view "green" CEA produce. These outcomes directly benefit the US CEA industry which is over $74 billion in size with an expected 10% annual growth rate. To ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry, such massive growth must be accompanied by appropriate reductions in energy use, improvements in energy efficiency, and a switch to clean energy sources - all of which are outcomes of this project. Our efforts to reduce carbon emissions from CEA will have the secondary benefit of lowering energy consumption and costs for producers as much as 25%. With energy bills making up a large component of production costs, this would be a huge win for farmers, consumers, and the environment.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
60%
Applied
40%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
Our team's long-term goal is to transform CEA strategically, managerially, technologically, and socially to position it as a viable food production system capable of producing sufficient and nutritious foods within the low-carbon economy.Our long term objectives are to:1) Reduce demand for heating and cooling in CEA, 2) Improve efficiency of CEA climate control, 3) Lower the carbon intensity of resource inputs, and 4) Shift consumer and producer behavior surrounding CEA products and practices.To accomplish this broad set of objectives, our team of plant biologists, biosystems engineers, agricultural economists, computer scientists, and horticulturists will engage in research, extension, and educational activities targeting a range of short- (S) and medium- (M) term objectives. These include:1. Improve plant temperature resilience through genetic and microbial approaches (M)2. Quantify impacts of novel cropping strategies (S)3. Utilize waste CO2 for plant production (M)4. Develop thermochemical methods that use agricultural residues for greenhouse heating and cooling (M)5. Utilize wastewater safely for irrigation (M)6. Improve greenhouse efficiency through design, modeling, and control (S, M)7. Map consumer willingness to pay across diverse populations and quantify production costs (S, M)8. Train future and existing producers through workshops and publications (S, M)9. Train future producers through gamified learning modules (M).
Project Methods
The project is too vast in scope to provide methodological detail. Below is a summary of the overall approach and a list of the tasks to be completed.This project focuses on plant production in greenhouses. We choose greenhouses over indoor agriculture because of their built-in capacity to utilize solar energy to drive photosynthesis with lower GHG emissions. It is also much more common than indoor agriculture and therefore interventions will have a broader immediate impact. We will focus our cross-institutional efforts on tomatoes and lettuce because they are the most-produced greenhouse plants and represent both a fruiting (warm season) and leafy (cool season) vegetable. This is an integrated research, extension, and education project. As such, there are interactions between each of these areas as shown in Fig. 1. For clarity, however, the tasks are broken down within the areas of research, extension, and education as follows:Research activities:Task 1. Identify loci governing chilling resilience of tomato by association mappingTask 2: Reduce cooling costs and extend the growing season of lettuce crops by breeding heat-tolerant varietiesTask 3: Harness microbial consortia for imparting stress resilience in tomato and lettuceTask 4: Determine the effects of seasonal cropping systems and polyculture on yield and energy consumptionTask 5: Test the effects of point-of-use climate control on cropsTask 6: Test light management strategies for enhanced yield and its impact on energy demandTask 7: Test experimental systems from other project teamsTask 8: Develop thermochemical methods that use agricultural residues for greenhouse heating and coolingTask 9: Develop a wastewater treatment train that allows for efficient nutrient transformation and pathogen control for CEA irrigationTask 10: Develop periphyton systems for nutrient recovery from post-plant effluentTask 11: Evaluate the optimal greenhouse designs and natural ventilation methods for greenhouses in the southern US with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and energy modelingTask 12: Develop dynamic hydroponic lettuce and tomato crop models to identify optimal growth conditions at different growth stages and predict yields to support decision-makingTask 13: Develop a decision support tool by integrating crop models and energy simulation to support smart climate control to improve energy use efficiency and crop productivityTask 14: Conduct a comparative life cycle assessment on multiple CEA production scenariosTask 15: Evaluate consumers' perceptions and their willingness to pay (WTP) for proposed low-carbon CEA commodities across different demographic populationsTask 16: Develop enterprise budgets for CEA under different technological and managerial practiceExtension activities:Task 17. Enhance CEA programming at the University of Florida, Small Farms AcademyTask 18: Training of extension agents on CEA best practices and low-carbon strategiesTask 19: Develop extension outreach documents that communicate CEA best practices and low-carbon strategiesEducation activities:Task 20: Develop learning modules using AR/VR to educate secondary school students on CEATask 21: Engage regional high schools in CEA education