Indoor Farming Markets

The demand for indoor farming crops is skyrocketing to meet the need for safer, more plentiful food and medicines. Biospection helps growers understand and manage environmental and biotic factors in real-time to improve yields, quality, and safety.

Above view of a head of lettuce

Earlier detection leads to higher revenue 

  • 3 to 12 days earlier – Real-time alerts for pathogens and microbes 
  • 5 to 6 fold earlier – Real-time alerts for plant stressors and plant trauma
  • More than ½ – Possible recovery of current production losses
  • 15-20% – Potential higher yields
  • $2-8 per square foot – Revenue increases for greens growers with average revenues of $49-$64 per square foot
  • $300 per square foot – Revenue increases for plant-based proteins from biopharmaceuticals

Indoor growers need more accurate plant health information

While crop monitoring solutions exist, they’re lacking the accuracy, precision, and speed to make a real difference when it comes to efficiencies and productivity. Plus, these tools detect a limited number of stressors, none of which include human pathogens—a costly problem for indoor growers.

For this reason, Biospection is working closely with indoor farming companies in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and the biopharmaceutical industries to test our technology and engineer solutions that will address their specific needs.

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

Driven largely by environmental sustainability needs and supply chain challenges, the CEA market is growing rapidly. With this growth comes a tremendous need and opportunity to improve efficiency.

The Problem 

  • Most CEA farms monitor crops using human inspectors or lower-resolution sensing methods, which is time-consuming and far less effective for problem mitigation. Smaller farms may lack sensing or monitoring technology altogether. 
  • While larger indoor farms can perform tests on plant samples, results can take up to two weeks—a long time when indoor crops have short growing periods.
  • Humans cannot distinguish salmonella or molds in leafy greens through visual inspection until it’s too late for remediation.

The Solution

  • Biospection’s patent-pending Rapid Crop Performance Analyzer (RCPA) is 3 to 5 times more accurate than commercial crop plant detectors on the market.
  • In 10 seconds, the RCPA captures data from each plant in its own environment and delivers predictive analytics.
  • The RCPA offers real-time detection and identification of both abiotic and biotic stressors simultaneously, alerting 3 to 12 days before current methods.
  • With accurate data in hand earlier, growers can increase yields by 15% to 20%. 

The indoor agriculture community is looking for technology to evidence that its products are indeed ‘Ready to Eat’ upon harvest as they do not incur the exposure to human hands, animal feces and dirt that outdoor products experience. There is no instrument or system like that on the market today, and that offering should provide a solid ROI to many indoor farms.”

– B. David Vosburg, Chief Innovation Officer, Local Bounti

Biopharmaceutical Industry

Vertical Indoor Farming (VIF) has become a viable alternative for the production of food crops and for emerging technologies such as molecular farming for the production of therapeutic proteins. The market segment of biopharmaceuticals from plant-based molecular farming is growing by 15 to 20% per year. 

The Problem

  • Biopharmaceutical producers do not have a way to predict the volume of plant-based proteins until after the harvest.
  • The six-week VIF crop plant growth cycle for greens leaves little time to avoid process defects, which could ultimately lead to crop loss.

The Solution

  • Biospection’s patent-pending Rapid Crop Performance Analyzer (RCPA) expedites plant, bacteria, and medicine growth monitoring in real time during the growth stages before harvesting. 
  • Our stress models show unique plant stress-bacteria response behaviors that allow precise bacteria differentiation including potency identification, allowing growers to predict their yields.

The multispectral imaging that [Biospection] develops through this project will make possible significant advances in the development of plant-made pharmaceutical (PMP) products. PMP discoveries at lab scale hold much promise, but these will only be actionable if plants can be optimized and grown consistently at scale. Indoor controlled growth environments are ideal for this reason. This is a critical step in unlocking the promise of plant-made pharmaceuticals.”

–Roger Buelow, CTO, AeroFarms

Contact us 

Biospection is looking to collaborate with indoor farming businesses as we continue to develop, refine, and ultimately, commercialize our Rapid Crop Monitoring Analyzer monitoring technologies. We welcome your partnership. Please contact us to learn more.