PhD student Felix Trimmer from Royal Holloway's Department of Biological Sciences has been featured in a BBC News article exploring how cutting-edge indoor farming technologies could help address the challenges facing modern agriculture. The report focused on the innovative aeroponic vertical farming systems developed by Innovation Agritech Group (IAG), one of the sponsors and industrial partners supporting Felix's research.
Felix Trimmer in front of a vertical farming system
The article highlights how crops can be grown year-round in highly controlled indoor environments without soil or natural sunlight. Using vertically stacked aeroponic growing panels, plants receive water and nutrients through a fine mist, while key environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and lighting are carefully managed. According to IAG, these systems can dramatically reduce water use while providing a resilient approach to food production in the face of climate change and increasingly challenging growing conditions.
Felix's doctoral research, supervised by Professor Alessandra Devoto and Professor Paul Devlin, focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and automated image analysis to controlled-environment agriculture. By continuously monitoring plant growth through imaging technologies, his work aims to identify signs of disease, stress or system failures at a very early stage, enabling problems to be addressed before they have a significant impact on crop performance.
In the BBC article, Felix discussed the growing role that AI is likely to play in agriculture, explaining how machine-learning approaches can be used to model plant growth and predict the effects of changing environmental conditions on crop yield. Such tools have the potential to provide real-time insights for growers, improving efficiency and supporting more sustainable food production.
The collaboration between Royal Holloway and Innovation Agritech Group provides an exciting opportunity to combine expertise in plant science, data analysis and agricultural technology. As controlled-environment agriculture continues to develop, partnerships of this kind will be increasingly important in helping to deliver innovative solutions for food security and sustainable crop production.
Congratulations to Felix on his BBC feature and on helping to showcase the exciting research being carried out within the Department of Biological Sciences.
Read the full BBC article: The crops being grown indoors without sun or soil.
