The project aims to develop and produce technological innovations applied to indoor agriculture and has already won recognition from NASA.

Latin American agri-food systems face numerous challenges in supplying a constantly growing population, as well as the pressure caused by the decrease in arable land around the world. For the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the search for sustainable practices with more efficient agricultural and food systems for Latin America is an urgent demand, given that the region's vast forests and extensive savannas play an essential role in shaping global weather patterns and mitigating climate change.

For this reason,  Varixx, a manufacturer of power electronics and LED lighting solutions, Vertigarden, a green solutions company for urban environments, and ESALQ, USP's “Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, have joined forces in an unprecedented partnership to develop technological applications for indoor agriculture. Also known as controlled environment agriculture, is a form of indoor cultivation in which all the environmental factors that affect plant growth and production (nutrients, water, temperature, relative humidity, lighting, air composition) are artificially optimized.

Professor Paulo Hercilio Viegas Rodrigues, from the Plant Production department at ESALQ-USP, is leading this research at the university and comments that the innovation makes it possible to create vertical gardens and vegetable gardens indoors."This new system allows for installation in any environment, including space. We are constantly improving it and have already grown a model with ten species of ornamental plants. Our cultivation of spices and strawberries has shown great promise and could revolutionize food production in the future,” says the professor.

The project was recently recognized by NASA in the Deep Space Food Challenge (DSFC). The competition is supported by both space agencies to reward new technologies or systems that maximize the production of safe, nutritious and tasty food for long-duration space missions and that also have the potential to benefit people on Earth.

“We realized that our workplace, the Laboratory of Ornamental Plants for Tissue Culture (LTCOP), was almost a space laboratory, since we work in conditions similar to those proposed by the DSFC,” says Rodrigues. “We then adapted the vertical gardens to the space available (in volume) in the spacecraft, as well as to the proposed growing conditions. Our differential was to use plant tissue culture to provide the germplasm needed to maintain the crops in space and on Mars, consuming minimal water and with limited use of electricity.”

According to Andre Bailone, Vertigarden's CEO, the indoor production model can immediately reach consumers located in large urban centers and thus aligns with some of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 11, which deals with more resilient and sustainable cities and communities. And also SDG 12, which talks about sustainable production and consumption patterns, with targets for the efficient use of natural resources. This includes reducing food waste and losses along production and supply chains, and reducing the use of chemicals that are harmful to the environment and human health.

Francis Piedade, Varixx's CEO concludes by saying that the interest now is not just in the quantity and quality of food, but in how this production impacts the environment, natural resources and the future of the planet. In this sense, indoor agriculture is an alternative for making cities more sustainable and resilient, in response to the growing challenges of natural resource scarcity, population pressure and climate change.