Excellence in Research/Collaborative Research: Smart Technology-enabled Nutrient Lifecycle and Supply Chain Management for Microgreens

This Excellence in Research (EiR) award supports research to engineer next-generation smart technology to improve farm-to-table food management of microgreen crops. Microgreens are edible plants that are only grown to the juvenile stage. These greens are known to have dense nutrients; however, they have a short production cycle and are easily perishable. This project represents a collaboration among three universities to study methods to support cultivation, harvesting, and transport in order to ensure the delivery of a high-quality nutritional product to the consumer. The project will investigate the effects of growth media and integrate data collection across experimental and commercial production platforms. The project's objective is to discover methods that support the optimization of the entire microgreen life cycle to deliver nutritious food to consumers. The project team will integrate expertise in plant biology, large scale food cultivation, and supply chain management of perishable products. The research activities include (1) investigation of the role of different growth media on beneficial phytochemicals in microgreens; (2) exploration of the metabolic pathways to identify conditions that boost amounts of select nutrients; (3) data collection on the cultivation and harvesting methods of microgreens; and (4) development of multiscale models to optimize the microgreen supply chain from production to consumer. The collaborating PIs will integrate biological studies with cultivation and harvesting studies using data collected across multiple systems with different time scales. Using smart technology, including sensors and data analytics, these studies will lead to establishing an optimal farm-to-table supply network. The project will expand the research capabilities of the collaborating institutions and provide educational and mentoring opportunities to produce HBCU graduates better prepared to enter the research workforce. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.