The 51st Annual Meeting of the USDA's NCERA-101 Committee and the UK's Controlled Environment Users Group (CEUG) will be hosted by the University of Edinburgh and the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, September 6–9, 2026.
The announcement was made during the 50th annual meeting, held April 5–9, 2025, in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. This year's event was co-hosted by Karma Verde Fresh co-founder Leo Lobato and the Autonomous Agrarian University Antonio Narro (UAAAN), at the Hotel Resort Chipinque.
More than 60 senior researchers and PhD students from institutions in Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, the UK, and the United States were in attendance. The list of participants included respected names in the CEA space such as Dr. Mark Romer (McGill University), Dr. Bruce Bugbee (Apogee Instruments), Dr. Neil Mattson (Cornell University), Dr. Ricardo Hernández (North Carolina State University), and Dr. Gilda Carrasco (University of Talca, Chile), among others.
The event featured three days of station reports, as well as a standout presentation by eight students from UAAAN and their professors, Dr. Daniela Alvarado and Dr. Luis Alonso Valdez. The team shared recent research—published in Agronomy—from their work at the Karma Verde Fresh–UAAAN vertical farming lab. Key topics included enhancing strawberry sweetness and flavor, tomato and pepper seedling propagation, and the vertical cultivation of Vinca for cancer and diabetes research.
Attendees also heard from Mercedes Arias of Puerto Vivo (Tampico) and Innovation Farms (Mexico City), who are using KVF systems to scale production and supply a growing CEA-driven food chain under the Cornucopia initiative. And in an unexpected twist, the conference's unofficial mascots—friendly black bears—delighted attendees by wandering the resort grounds.
For more information:
Karma Verde Fresh
www.karmaverdefresh.com