A 20-story vertical super-plant factory in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, is exploring ways to support the country's modernized agriculture, focusing on intelligent and industrialized crop cultivation.
It is the world's first ultra-high-rise smart vertical plant factory production system, developed by the Institute of Urban Agriculture under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Wang Sen, chief executive of the institute, said that with automated equipment, plants can be provided with an environment even better than nature, resulting in improvements in both quality and yield.
"As the name suggests, the plant factory grows crops using industrial methods. Light, temperature, water and nutrients are fully automated to create optimal conditions. Land-use efficiency is also extremely high. This 20-story facility can deliver up to 120 times the yield of traditional open-field farming," Wang said.
By minimizing dependence on land and climate conditions, the facility incorporates technological safeguards that allow production to continue even in extreme scenarios. It is also speeding up seed development, a critical pillar of long-term food security.
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