Precision Indoor Plants

Precision Indoor Plants (PIP), a public-private partnership, helps food producers grow flavorful, nutritious food indoors. The consortium’s audacious research increases our ability to produce quality crops that are valuable and desired by consumers.

Generating Urban Food Systems Solutions

Program Contact

John Reich
jreich@foundationfar.org

Development Contact

Kashyap Choksi
kchoksi@foundationfar.org

PIP’s Research Focus

PIP is revolutionizing the production of nutritious foods that can be grown indoors and, ultimately, in any environment.

PIP’s initial projects focus on:

Adapting lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries for indoor agriculture
Optimizing plant architecture for controlled environments
Advancing speed-breeding technology
Altering chemicals produced in plants that impact flavor, nutrition and medicines
Developing new technologies to quickly detect specific chemicals without harming the plant

Existing Food Production Systems Must Evolve

The future of food production faces numerous challenges – climate change, shifts in consumer demands and the need for food production in new frontiers. One promising food production approach to these challenges is controlled environment agriculture.

Controlled environments offer unprecedented opportunities to improve nutritional content, flavor and crop quality. Current interest and investment in controlled environment agriculture are largely focused on growing facilities and energy costs. However, realizing the potential of indoor agriculture systems requires developing a broader variety of crops designed for controlled environment agriculture.

PIP leverages private-sector investments to develop crops specifically for indoor agriculture. Our participants collaboratively set ambitious scientific goals and pool resources to fund the research to achieve those goals. We welcome new participants interested in joining us or co-funding individual projects.

PIP’s Vision

A world where nutritious food is sustainably grown irrespective of geography or climate

PIP is exploring how to adapt plants to indoor environments to grow flavorful, nutritious and resource-efficient crops in a variety of environments.

Designing Crops for Indoor Agriculture

The PIP consortium generates the knowledge and resources to accelerate the development of crops that thrive in controlled environment agriculture.

We are advancing crop science by focusing on problems largely underfunded or overlooked, such as nutrition and taste. By controlling most factors during crop development, we explore how the combination of environmental inputs and genetic control gives rise to desired traits. We are using a variety of pioneering methods including advancements in artificial intelligence, phenomics and computational modeling to achieve PIP’s vision.

Additionally, this research expands the potential for growing crops in any environment. Increasing nutrient content and yields, growing crops with less energy and understanding how crops perform best in controlled environment agriculture can improve farming in a wide variety of agricultural environments, including space.

Consortium Partners

PIP convenes a diverse array of global leaders who are changing the way crops are produced. The participants include AeroFarms, BASF, Benson Hill, FFAR, Fluence, GreenVenus and Priva.