Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 21 INDOOR GROWING BY HEATHER BRIGGS G rowing potato crops indoors in pods in a vertical farming system could be a huge step-change for the sector. Jonathan Clarke, head of business development at the John Innes Centre and non-executive director at GroPod Ltd shared his knowledge on the research presented at the ‘Bringing e Outside In - Innovating for Controlled Environment Agriculture’ conference organised by AgriTech East. Trial challenges A trial on heritage potatoes, undertaken at GroPod, looked at the potential to produce a crop of a high value crisping variety that was failing in eld. e challenge was to deliver both a high yield and meet speci c quality and processing standards, including the reduction of acrylamide levels and the maintenance of Heather Briggs looks at the research surrounding indoor growing and talks to one of the experts about its potential for producingmore crops. esh colour. Two chambers were set up. One featured lighting for the canopy. e other was composed of 1 sq m units of growth space for the roots and tubers and was completely dark to prevent tuber greening. Tubers were allowed to grow until they reached a certain weight, when they tended to break o from the root. Jonathan said: “We placed no constraints on the choice of variety or any processing traits requested by the processor. We met or exceeded all the processor’s requirements within the project.” However, he admits, the ideal would have been to have all tubers grow at the same rate and reach the desired size on the same day. “What we achieved was accurate prediction of the timing of tuber initiation and a tight window of time for the crop to be harvest ready,” he said. “ ere is still a need to do some ne-tuning on how to create the perfect environmental conditions for the crop.” “Nevertheless, using indoor vertical farming systems could open the door to producing up to four potato crops per year according to demand.” As a result, there would be no need to store the crop, so there would be no maximum residue limits (MRLs) to contend with from sprout suppressants. “In addition, we were able to reduce the post crisping acrylamide levels by 50% by removing cold storage induced sweetening and lowering asparagine content,” he added. Growing area reduction e potato growing area would be signi cantly reduced, Jonathan said. “If potato crops were stacked four high, with four crops being grown a year, the ➜ “Using indoor vertical farming systems could open the door to producing up to four potato crops per year according to demand.” ‘Just-in-time’ potato growing

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