Indoor farming research

What does indoor farming research actually involve?

Indoor farming research (R&D/breeding in indoor farming) covers research, development, and breeding of crops in a fully controlled, daylight-free environment. This includes studies on plant growth and physiology, root development, flowering and fruiting, interactions with light recipes (LED), irrigation and fertilization strategies, air movement, CO₂, diseases, and the effects of biological and other crop treatments. The same applies to breeding: the whole process from selection to evaluation can take place entirely or partially in controlled environments, enabling you to make faster, more consistent decisions and implement results more rapidly. 

Vertical farming research

An important distinction: daylight-free research does not have to be vertical. Often, research cells are designed with multiple growing layers (vertical farming) for space efficiency reasons, since you can create identical lighting conditions in each layer with LEDs. But indoor research can also be done in a single-layer setup, much like a greenhouse but without daylight and in strictly controlled conditions. Indoor farming is therefore the broader concept; vertical farming is a common (but not standard) setup within it.

What are the advantages of R&D/breeding in indoor farming?

Daylight-free R&D and breeding are all about complete control, repeatability, and speed. Here are the main advantages and what they offer in practice. 

Advantage 1: Stable research conditions

In a fully controlled environment, outdoor temperature, sunlight exposure, and day length are irrelevant. In fact, you determine the exact conditions you need for your research question and focus solely on the variables you want to test. This improves the reliability of your results and makes it easier to compare different trials over time.

Advantage 2: Highest hygiene standard

When the growing environment and access are strictly controlled, pests and diseases get little opportunity to spread. You can achieve very high hygiene standards (GHP/lab-like) in your research environment, minimizing the need to intervene with crop protection products and keeping your data cleaner. This is particularly valuable for sensitive research or when small differences make a big impact. 

Advantage 3: Lower costs due to faster turnaround and fewer losses

Reproducibility is not just a scientific goal; it is economically important, too. Full control leads to far fewer failed trials, faster conclusions, and a higher turnaround. Additionally, you are no longer tied to growing seasons: you can run the same trials year round and shorten growing cycles, since plants are always in an optimal growing climate.

Advantage 4: Better germination results, better plant health, and potentially improved seed storage qualities

In daylight-free propagation, you can steer the germination process more closely to the crop’s needs. This results in more uniform and more robust starting material that is better equipped for the next cultivation phase – be it the greenhouse or the field. 

Advantage 5: Controlled simulation of certain extreme conditions

Stress and resilience research often requires extremes: fluctuations in light and temperature, drought stress, or specific RH profiles. Indoor farming research allows you to simulate these extremes in a controlled way, changing one factor at a time and giving you much more confidence in cause and effect. This speeds up the acquisition of insights and improves the quality of your conclusions. 

When does indoor farming research make sense?

To get real value from daylight-free R&D or breeding, simply having some LEDs and a climate chamber is not enough. You need a setup where climate, water, and (if relevant) energy are all monitored and managed as one system, complete with data logging, alarms, and consistent setpoint strategies. Priva’s approach to indoor farming takes precisely this integrated perspective: creating and managing optimal growing conditions by having total control of the climate, lighting, energy, and water. It’s also an advantage if your indoor facility can be operated and monitored remotely, for example with a cloud-based system to which you can connect your fully controlled growing environment.

Indoor farming research has a wide range of applications, but in practice there are several types of organizations where the business case makes a rapid impact. 
 

1. Education: universities, colleges, and vocational schools

Educational institutions are conducting more and more applied research into sustainable food production. A daylight-free research facility gives students and researchers consistent conditions year round, making it easier to rigorously plan and compare trials – even across different academic terms.

2. Public and commercial research institutions

Governments and businesses test energy consumption, water quality, emissions, and reductions in crop protection products. Repeatability is particularly important in this kind of research: you want to be sure that an effect comes from the intervention itself and not from an unwanted change in environmental factors. 

3. Breeding companies (vegetables, softfruits and ornamentals)

Breeding is capital-intensive and time-critical. Any acceleration in cycles, reduction in losses, and improvement in decision-making quality shortens the time to market. Indoor R&D and breeding allow you to standardize processes and reduce risks without having to depend on seasons or other external variables.

Priva's vision for indoor research and breeding

The core principle of daylight-free indoor farming research is simple: turn your growing environment into a measuring tool. The more consistent and controllable your growing and trial conditions, the more reliable your data and the faster you will move from hypothesis to decision. At Priva, we design indoor farming with this in mind: integrated control over every process to make growing conditions predictable, scalable, and manageable. 

Why contact us? Because working with the right partner helps you set up an effective facility faster and make the right design choices from the start. Together, we can help you:

✓ Identify the best approach for the climate and water engineering challenges in your research
✓ Design your indoor R&D or breeding facility (from growing strategy to integrated control architecture)
✓ Connect you with the right installation partner for implementation and delivery