In the coming decades, urbanisation is expected to increase considerably. Today, 54 per cent of the world population lives in urban areas. By 2050, this share is forecast to increase to 66 per cent. That equates to an additional 2.4 billion people living in urban centres.[1]

The need to feed these increasing urban populations is placing unprecedented pressure on the agriculture industry. To secure higher productivity, the sector relies upon synthetic fertilisers derived from energy intensive manufacturing methods; the run-off from these fertilisers coupled with the food mileage required for crops to reach our cities is having a devastating environmental impact. In addition, for every 1° increase in atmospheric temperature, 10% of farmland used for crop production will be lost. [2] This destructive cycle impacts consumers, farmers, and the environment.

One way of protecting our crops and the land we use for agriculture is by growing within controlled, contained environments. Growing indoors is already a well-established practice; greenhouses are widely used and guarantee a safer, and more predictable method of growing. By carefully controlling the parameters within these environments, we can artificially create the optimum growth conditions for a specific crop, maximising yield.

The need for sustainable agricultural solutions has never been greater. It is our contention that by combining these artificial and contained growth systems with the efficient use of space in our cities, we may relieve some of the pressure being placed upon the agriculture industry by increasing urban populations – leading the paradigm shift towards an urban future where sustainable agricultural solutions are commonplace.

Newcaslte iGEM 2018 proposes an alternative root.

Governments and local authorities are responsible for providing and upholding essential services for its citizens, this is especially poignant for the provision of food and protection of farmland.

Newcastle City council has recently declared their bold plans to convert Newcastle into a ‘Smart City’. This is an initiative to make the city more connected, becoming a pioneering figure in the digital revolution. They are looking to pursue areas such as ‘smart energy,’ ‘smart mobility,’ and ‘smart screens’ - see the Newcastle smart city diagram below. However, we felt the ambitious plans neglected a ‘smart agriculture’ approach.

As a result, we decided to take on the challenge of designing a ‘smart agriculture’ solution for Newcastle, demonstrating how the city can shift towards a sustainable agricultural model – setting an example for other cities across the globe – in turn, beginning to tackle some of the global issues our iGEM project set out to solve.

To begin, we researched into areas of the city where we feel space is being underutilised, and in which a sustainable food source would have the most impact. After studying the urban agriculture industry and communicating with stakeholders (see timeline below) we found a space that gives access to locations across the city. Newcastle’s Victoria Tunnel; a disused tunnel that was once used to transport coal from the mines down to the river for shipment - as well serving as a bunker during WWII. It runs beneath a variety of urban hubs that would benefit from fresh produce including: Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Royal Victoria Hospital, Student villages, and Business centres (see map below).

As part of our human practices we have conceptualised an architectural design project within the Victoria Tunnel that transforms it into a hydroponic urban farm. This design exercise integrates / was informed by all elements of our project – stakeholder engagement, wetware, hardware, and safety.

Below is the journey we took to design the Victoria Tunnel urban farm:

Step 1: Initial Project Considerations

(LEGISLATION/SAFETY)

Once we had decided upon the initial project idea we knew that we would be working with pants; leading us to look for applications for our product within the agriculture industry. As a result, our project - if successful - would potentially involve releasing our genetically modified bacteria into soil microbial communities – but we were aware this may have undesirable and unforeseen impacts on the rhizosphere too.

To further our understanding of this topic, we began to look at existing legislation surrounding the release of GMO’s and the environment. We read official documentation relating to the use of GMO's in contained environments (GMO LEGISLATION)

Therefore, we highlighted early on the necessity to explore the use of our bacteria in contained environments – this way we have comply with safe project design / responsible innovation standards.

(WETWARE/HARDWARE)

When planning the wetware side of the project and figuring out what experiments we needed to do, it became immediately obvious that there would be a need to develop a device than enables high-throughput experimental outcomes as we are working with plants over a relatively short period of time – this led to the idea of making our own hydroponic system (see hardware)

Once we knew we were searching for applications for our bacteria within the agriculture industry, and that we would be doing so in the context of contained growth environments – we began to line up meetings with relevant stakeholders.

In Summary, we asked our stakeholders about their values and the overwhelming response was a commitment to sustainable agriculture: reducing the carbon footprint of the agriculture industry, reducing the cost of fresh produce to consumers (whilst increasing accessibility), and reducing costs for farmers. Inevitably we felt our bacteria solved the issue of reducing carbon footprint by reducing the demand for fertilisers – but we still needed to find a way in which it could be used to solve some of the other issues raised by stakeholders - such as feeding the increasing urban population.

More detailed information about how the conversations with stakeholders influenced our project can be seen in step 3

Once we had consulted the relevant stakeholders and felt we had gathered sufficient information we began to feed this in to the design and execution of the project.

NAFFERTON FARM VISIT

Newcastle University have two farms where they conduct agricultural studies (Nafferton & Cockle Park Farm). We thought visiting Nafferton farm would be an excellent opportunity for us to understand more about the context our bacteria may be used in. Touring the farm, we were shown different research sites on both conventional and organic farm land. We were given feedback on our project idea from a growers & farmers perspective, they were quick to raised concerns about releasing genetically modified organisms into their soil and insisted upon contained growth environments.

All in all everyone at the farm was excited about the prospect of our project, especially as it has to potential to reduce the costs and environmental impact associated with conventional fertilisers.

HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT

The Legal and social considerations of the project highlighted in step 1 drove the development of NH-1, a low-cost, small-scale and programmable hydroponic system tailored to overcome experimental limitations faced by many plant scientists. The development of this system prompted our visits to GrowModule365 and Growing Underground, as well as our skype call with GrowUp Urban Farms (All of which grow fresh produce hydroponically). The conversations had with these stakeholders gave crucial insight into how hydroponic systems function with regards to achieving optimum conditions for maximum output. We then returned to the Engineering lab to install these conditions into our hydroponics.

For example, GrowModule365 told us they use purple light in their hydroponic systems as it is the most cost effective, we then took this information and confirmed this (link graph) and set this as standard in our hydroponic system.

Building a hydroponic system also prompted the theoretical exploration of future deployment techniques for GM bacteria within contained environments. It is at this point that we began thinking about how our GMO’s could be used to enhance sustainable crop productivity at a local and accessible level.

Growing Underground grow fresh produce in unused WWII bunkers under the streets of Clapham, London. We loved the idea of taking neglected spaces within the urban environment that once provided a service and repurposing them. On return from our visit to their facilities, we were made aware by one of our supervisors of a disused tunnel that runs under Newcastle – The Victoria tunnel. Directly inspired by Growing Underground, we began to envision using our own hydroponic system to grow fresh produce that is locally accessible under the streets of Newcastle. Growing Underground made us aware of the following advantages of growing in contained environments within our cities:

• Providing cities with fresh produce all year round.
• Reducing the Carbon footprint of crop production due to reduced food millage.
• No agricultural run-off.
• Limited need for pesticides and herbicides.
• Safer crops as there is less risk of contamination.
• Reduced spoilage because of shorter transportation times and reduced handling
• Less agricultural pollution.

WETWARE DEVELOPMENT

Seed coating:
Initially our project involved providing farmers with a preserved culture of the adapter bacteria for roots to be inoculated by wounding (a common method in microbiology) [3]. When presenting our project to GrowUp Urban farms, the ability and willingness of commercial farmers to use these methods while achieving the desired effect was questioned. Tom Webster highlighted that farmers may consider the time taken to inoculate the plants more costly than applying fertiliser and recommended we consider using our product as a seed coating.

This influenced our wetware as from here our focus switched to coating sterile seeds with our bacteria in order to inoculate the seedling as it grows.

Endophyte Isolation:
Talks with Tom Webster from GrowUp Urban farms highlighted concern about the localisation of the endophyte within the plant. We had not considered the issues with the GMO being present in the leaves/fruit of the plant.

This impacted our wetware in that we no longer attempted to re-isolate endophytes from just the roots, from this point we cut roots and leaves separately to re-isolate endophytes. In the event of the endophyte being present in the fruit it is possible for future work to engineer the bacterium to remain localised in the root.

SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS

We had a Skype meeting with Chris Tapsall, Research Director at KWS Seeds. KWS are in the top 5 of the biggest seed producers in the world. The meeting was eye-opening, we discussed consumers views towards the use of GMO's in crop production and how some markets may be more accepting of our product than others. We also talked about the importance of transparency when it comes to marketing a product in relation to the use of genetically modified material.

We learnt about certain EU regulations, and alternative applications for our bacteria that we hadn't previously imagined (I.e methods in which a manufacturer could apply our bacteria to a seed). Chris was passionate about our project and forwarded our information to other researchers in KWS.

Please see our Safety Page for more information on how we designed our urban farm to comply with safety standards.

CONSUMER VIEWS

When eating at a local restaurant, one of our team members noticed the small print at the bottom of the menu (see below). The small print assures customers that none of their food products contain ‘genetically modified materials.’ This got us thinking about whether consumers would want to eat food grown with our bacteria.

Products grown within our proposed urban farm would be different to the traditional genetically modified crops in the sense that our crops wouldn’t be genetically modified at all – but the bacteria that colonise the roots would be. As a result, we think that this would make consumers more comfortable about eating products grown in this way.

To further our understanding about consumer views and how best to market our product we invited Food Nation to visit us at the university. Food Nation is a social enterprise based in Newcastle with a vision to inspire people about good food, they have extensive knowledge about consumers views on food products.

Listening to Food Nations story and the good food initiatives they’re involved with got us re-evaluating the values of our own project. The food companies we visited prior to Food Nation (GrowModule365, Growing Underground, Grow Up) were all commercial enterprises – but we loved the idea of becoming a social enterprise too – an urban farm owned by the local community – any profits of which go back into the community – the farm could also act as a healthy foodbank. Visit our exhibition space at the jamboree to see our mock-up public consultation poster and leaflets regarding starting up the Victoria Tunnel urban Farm.

If we take this project further after the jamboree, Food Nation have the contacts to enable us to conduct thorough public consultations as well as the relevant contacts within the local council who could potentially make a concept like the Victoria Tunnel Urban farm possible.

CONCLUSION

Our thorough approach to stakeholder engagement has had a huge impact on the outcome of our project. The Victoria Tunnel urban farm concept was our way of bringing it all together: stakeholder engagement, safety, hardware, and wetware. Moreover, it gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our vision of what a sustainable urban future may look like for Newcastle – a future that uses land efficiently, a future that reduces the pressure on the agriculture industry to use synthetic fertilisers.... a future for sustainable agriculture.