Agrifood

The majority of the local indoor farmers grow crops that are harvested for their leaves. One way to increase the growth rate of such leafy greens is to provide a longer period of light. However, some of the crops grown, e.g., spinach, are long-day plants that flower when the light periods are longer than their critical day-length. While important to a plant’s life cycle, this vegetative to reproductive phase change is undesirable for farmers, not only because it shortens the harvest period hence reducing the yield, but also because it changes the taste profile. To tackle this problem, a light recipe that was able to suppress flowering was formulated. Plants grown under this light recipe showed a faster growth rate than those grown under flowering-suppressing short-day photoperiod. Moreover, they do not flower even when the light period has surpassed the critical day-length. Positive results were obtained when this light recipe was tested on spinach and arugula. This technology would work for other long-day crops, and it will be beneficial to indoor farmers who are interested to try it.

This Internet of Things (IoT) software architecture addresses a decentralized framework to provide the ability to exchange data between IoT devices autonomously without any centralized server. In recent years, the development of IoT applications has become increasingly complex. Thus, this technology addresses the problem by providing the ability to simplify the streaming of data to the IoT platforms over the web. The IoT platform is designed to assist modern-day farmers in monitoring the entire farm seamlessly. It can be customized to suit each farm depending on the type of sensors, machine vision camera, cloud storage, etc. Equipped with detailed data tracking and analytics to provide the most accurate growth process from start to finish. This design can be customized for other applications. The technology owner is looking for partners and collaborators to further co-develop this technology in urban farming.