Over the past year, the UK Agri-Tech Centre has collaborated extensively with Concert Bio to carry out a series of growth trials hosted by their delivery partner, Stockbridge Technology Centre. These trials focused on high-throughput testing of Concert Bio’s microbial biostimulants within a deep water culture lettuce production system.
Hydroponic greenhouses are increasingly viewed as a potential solution to the global challenge of boosting food production. By offering innovative growing methods, they present opportunities to reduce reliance on food imports, lower emissions, and cut food miles. Additionally, they enable longer growing seasons and safeguard food production against unpredictable weather. However, these systems face challenges, including high labour demands, significant initial investments, and related emissions.
Despite their promise, hydroponic greenhouses and other soilless systems like vertical farms must overcome a fundamental hurdle: plants have evolved alongside soil microbes that naturally enhance growth, resilience, and disease resistance. These beneficial interactions are largely absent in soilless environments, which can hinder the efficiency and sustainability of these farming methods. Addressing this issue, Concert Bio, a UK-based start-up, is pioneering the use of biostimulants tailored for hydroponic systems. Their biostimulants are designed to replicate the positive interactions between plants and soil microbes, helping to restore the advantages lost in soilless farming. This innovative approach aims to optimise production and promote a shift towards sustainable agricultural practices.
The trials yielded promising results, with several biostimulant candidates significantly improving plant growth, including size, fresh weight, and dry weight yield compared to control groups.
With recent investment from venture capital, Concert Bio is also advancing its technology by leveraging high-throughput sequencing to offer growers detailed microbiome analyses. Growers can send samples to Concert Bio for analysis, which links microbial activity to crop performance and management practices. Insights are generated rapidly using the company’s extensive database of microbiome data, the largest collection focused on soilless agriculture globally. This database supports machine learning algorithms that identify beneficial microbes for targeted agricultural improvements.
This initiative exemplifies a pivotal opportunity for the agri-food sector to transition from synthetic inputs to biological alternatives, enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems. Supporting innovation in sustainable food production is central to the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s mission. These early trials underline the significant potential of restoring microbial interactions in soilless systems, delivering measurable benefits in lettuce growth and yield.
