Elcke and Mauro’s BIO+ Bites #04: Vertical farming is (almost) coming
The BIO+ Bites newsletter is all about life sciences and the innovations reshaping them. From health innovations impacting people’s lives to food tech developments, we've got you covered.
In the last installment of this newsletter, I (Mauro) promised that we would make up for September’s lack of food tech news. Well, I can say that your appetite will be satisfied. As an appetizer, we start with vertical farms.
The power of vertical farming
California might have Silicon Valley, but the Dutch city of Wageningen is the core of Seed Valley. It is undoubtedly less flashy– and you cannot get there on an Uber– but there is a strong vision for what the future of the food industry will look like. In this picture, there is certainly room for vertical farming. This technology consists of growing vegetables in vertical arrays and optimizing land, water, and pesticide use. Vertical farming was the core of Wageningen’s Sky High conference, a chance to stakeholders to meet and collaborate on further development of this growing technique.
The vertical farm goes from hype to reality: nice promises, lots of bottlenecks
Giving vegetables optimum quality is Jan van den Berg’s mission, both as a professor at Maastricht University and as a technology scout for breeding company BASF|Nunhems. In his view: “Vertical farming can play a big role in giving vegetables the best possible quality. Unlike outdoor farming, you can determine all the conditions in detail on a vertical farm.”
The perfect head lettuce, tomato, or cucumber: ‘It is my mission to give vegetables optimum quality’
Tracking food carbon footprint
The first course on today's menu is about food and AI. Thanks to nutritional facts labels, we can make more conscious choices about the food we eat, scanning for calories and macronutrients. Besides all the greenwashing and baiting marketing claims, we are moving towards a future where showing sustainability information about a product will become increasingly important. Yopla is on a mission to do so. The startup created an AI to help food companies make environmentally friendly choices. Yopla is last year’s winner of the AI Pitch Competition, whose grand finale is scheduled for November 7.
This company makes checking carbon footprints as easy as checking calories
Learnings of a cultivated meat pioneer
Meat is an excellent second course, isn't it? And what if it was cultivated meat? The founder of Meatable Krijn de Noord knows a thing or two about it, as the company has been the first European company to offer a tasting of its cultivated meat. During the last edition of the startup event LEVEL UP, De Noord shared the lessons he and his team learned in six years of pioneering lab-grown meat.
A key month for ONWARD Medical
Dulcis in fundo, as the Latins would say– October has definitely been a sweet month for ONWARD Medical. They are on an ambitious mission: giving people with spinal cord injury the chance to move their limbs. October has been an important month for them—and for paraplegic people. First, they acquired the right to use CEA-Clinatec’s WIMAGINE brain-computer interface (BCI). This technology, combined with their spinal cord stimulator, will allow incapacitated people to move their paralyzed limbs with thought power.
On Thursday, the company bagged €50 million. ONWARD is about to enter the US market and will use the money to improve its research capabilities. The funds came from German company Ottobock, a leading player in prosthetics and orthopedic devices, which concurrently acquired 10% of ONWARD.
Eindhoven breakthrough: €50 million for walking revolution paraplegic patients
In case you missed them, tickets are still available for the Agrifood Innovation Event 2024, the first event organized by IO and Jakajima, a sneak preview of the future of food tech. The conference has two parallel programs: Beyond 3D Printing and Vertical Farming; tickets are available here.
To the next tray of BIO+ Bites!
Mauro Mereu - editor at Innovation Origins