Vertical agriculture, the Institute of Crop Science inaugurates the new sustainable container to investigate the response of horticultural species to changes in environmental and cultivation conditions
The Institute of Crop Science of the Sant'Anna School enriches the equipment of its research facilities with the installation of an ‘isothermal high cube container’, a customised climatic chamber for experimenting with the cultivation of different plant varieties. The container opens up the possibility of using innovative techniques in the field of vertical farming to further study the response of horticultural species to variations in environmental and cultivation conditions.
The set-up was realised thanks to the AGRITECH Project, as part of the system initiatives of Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.4 ‘Strengthening research structures and creation of “national R&D champions” on some Key Enabling Technologies’ of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU.
The ‘isothermal high cube container’ is a reconditioned container used as a vertical farm, entirely customised by Greatit srl, a company active in the field of sustainable and km0 agriculture. The structure consists of a chamber for experimenting with different types of plants with an internal volume of 25.13 cubic metres, and has been equipped with every instrument necessary for growing plants under controlled conditions. A cell control system makes it possible to vary the temperature from +5°C to +45°C and to regulate other fundamental environmental parameters, such as humidity control, between 60 and 90%, or the activation of an anti-stratification system that sucks in air in the upper zone and diffuses it to the ground so as to obtain uniform thermo-hygrometric conditions throughout the cell, without the air flows directly hitting the product to be treated. And again, a fertigation system allows fertilisers to be distributed with irrigation water and different solutions to be administered simultaneously.
All these features make the climate chamber particularly suitable for scientific experimentation. Inside the chamber are shelves, of a different size from those normally used in the trade for vegetables such as microgreens and baby leaves (young seedlings and growing leaves of leafy vegetables), which are suitable for the growth of different medium-sized species, as well as sensors for assessing the quality of light, an internal camera and software for managing the settings remotely, via smartphones and tablets.
In the climatic chamber, researchers at the Institute of Plant Production will be able to carry out experiments for the AGRITECH project involving the growth of seedlings of vegetable species in a hydroponic system, i.e. an above-ground cultivation system, with the detection of the parameters required to select the different genotypes according to their response to the administration of water at different salinity levels.
