Lx Crop is a project aimed at advancing the science of urban food systems and environmental modelling. Its main goal is to develop a microbial hydroponic food system able to produce functional food, helping cities to achieve their agenda goals for food security, and explore new business opportunities associated with emerging sustainable urban agriculture.
Since 2015, more than 100 cities have signed the Milan Food Policy Pact and committed to develop sustainable food policies. However, it is still difficult for a city to gauge, or anticipate, the impacts of its food policy on resident health, food affordability and the environment. Concomitantly, commercial building-integrated agriculture (BIA) farms are emerging in large cities such as New York, highlighting their widely perceived economic value and relevance for urban policy making.
Lx Crop will create a building-integrated agriculture (BIA) prototype by installing an hydroponic production system in a shipping container.
PGPM are microorganisms (rhizobacteria, endo- and ectomycorrhizal fungi, cyanobacteria and other) that interact with plant roots, sometimes actively colonizing them, and improve plant growth and yield. PGPM can stimulate plant defenses and secondary metabolism, which are related with plant nutritional properties.
LxCrop will test and use consortia of PGPM to promote plant defense and nutritional quality.
NFT is a hydroponic technique where a very shallow stream of water containing all the dissolved nutrients required for plant growth is re-circulated past the bare roots of plants in a watertight gully, also known as channels.
Lx Crop aims at creating an NTS hydroponics system adapted and optimized to the dimensions and conditions inside a shipping container.
LxCrop will develop MH by combining NFT and root inoculation with PGPM to produce functional foods (enriched in Zn, Fe, vitamins, anti-oxidants).
A plant health monitoring system will be developed that is able to detect diseases at early stages of infection. This will improve the timeliness and effectiveness of phytosanitary product application, minimizing their use.
The system will combine two non-destructive monitoring methods: monitoring of volatile organic compounds using an electronic nose (E-nose), and leaf thermal images (infrared thermography – IRT).
The information obtained will be integrated in a digital platform and used to manage phytosanitary treatments.
