Rethinking the field: Urban agriculture and nutritious food production
Texas A&M AgriLife expands urban agriculture research with Dallas controlled environment horticulture program
By Gabe Saldana
AgriLife Today
Feb 18, 2020
Excerpt:
The purple-glowing installation arrived at Dallas with Genhua Niu, Ph.D., and Texas A&M AgriLife Research professor of controlled environment agriculture. Her research team represents one component of an overarching push by Texas A&M AgriLife to realize sustainable production of nutritious food within cities — the next frontier in commercial agriculture.
Niu’s research is in urban horticulture specifically. This can conjure images of community and backyard gardens, or rooftop and balcony plant installations, but her focus is producing quality food in controlled environments. Her studies are especially relevant in Dallas — of which certain communities are urban food deserts — and they carry promising implications for agriculture industries across rural Texas, too.
“AgriLife’s substantial investments in urban agriculture innovation reflect our commitment to better human nutrition and health at every interval along the food supply chain,” said Patrick Stover, Ph.D., vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of AgriLife Research. “In addressing these obstacles, we can bring to bear the considerable research and extension resources of the Texas A&M University System.”
Niu comes to Dallas from the AgriLife Center at El Paso, where her work since 2004 hinged on research conducted in varying greenhouse settings. Now, controlled environments at the renovated urban center at Dallas allow her to direct innovation toward vertical farming systems housed fully indoors.
Niu earned her doctorate in horticultural engineering at Chiba University in Japan as controlled environment agriculture there gained momentum in the 1980s. The research area has seen rapid growth in recent years on the heels of climate change concern and increasing limitations of global open-field production.
