Tiny tomatoes could mean big profits for urban agriculture
Grants support continued development of tomatoes for vertical farming
By Holly Ober
UC Riverside
May 24, 2021
Excerpt:
Urban agriculture offers many benefits for food production but often has higher costs relative to traditional farming and is limited to only a few crops.
Robert Jinkerson, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UC Riverside, is working to change this by engineering the size and nutritional value of tomato plants to increase both the diversity and value of crops that can be grown in urban controlled environment agriculture, or CEA.
Jinkerson has received a $450,000 New Innovator grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, or FFAR, to advance this research. FFAR’s New Innovator in Food & Agriculture Research Award provides early career scientists with funding to conduct audacious food and agriculture research.
By 2050, there will be nine billion people on the planet, but arable land is decreasing. Global food production will need to double to meet food needs, though climate change complicates the problem more.
“Urban controlled environment agriculture can offer many benefits for the production of crops and is likely to supply more food in the future as worldwide food demand increases,” Jinkerson said.
