The UK Agri-Tech Centre has worked closely with Concert Bio over the past year to deliver a series of growth trials at our delivery partner site, Stockbridge Technology Centre. We conducted some high-throughput testing of Concert Bio’s microbial biostimulants within a deep water lettuce production system.
Hydroponic greenhouses are seen as potential solutions to the global need to increase food production. These innovative production methods offer an opportunity to reduce dependence on food imports, cut emissions and decrease food miles by extending growing seasons and protecting food production from weather events. However, they are currently hampered by high labour demands, significant capital requirements and the associated emissions.
Despite their potential, hydroponic greenhouses (and other soilless indoor systems such as vertical farms) face significant challenges. One major issue is that plants have evolved over millions of years to harness the soil microbes around them. These beneficial microbes bring resilience to plants and improve growth, disease resistance and quality produce. Many of these benefits are inherently lost in these systems. This loss can impact the overall efficiency and sustainability of hydroponic and vertical farming operations.
To address these challenges, UK start-up Concert Bio is pioneering the use of biostimulants in hydroponic systems. Concert Bio designs biostimulants to mimic the natural interactions between plants and soil microbes and restore the microbial benefits lost in soilless production systems. This approach aims to optimise food production in such systems and to support the global shift towards a more sustainable agriculture.
Recently, the UK Agri-Tech Centre ran trials of some of Concert Bio’s candidate microbial products at Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC). These trials were carried out using the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s Deep Water Hydroponic tanks, replicating commercial growing conditions. Using lettuce as a test crop, experiments collecting key metrics including plant size and weight were conducted to identify efficient soilless treatments.
The results from these commercial trials showed multiple promising candidate products which improved plant growth in terms of size, fresh weight and dry weight yield, compared with a control.
With recent venture capital investment, Concert Bio is also using advanced sequencing technology to offer comprehensive microbiome insights to growers. Growers can send in samples to identify the links between their actions, the microbial community and their crops. This process provides immediate insights, drawing from Concert Bio’s extensive database of soilless agriculture microbiome data—the largest of its kind in the world. This database powers the machine learning algorithms that Concert Bio uses to identify beneficial microbes.
The work highlights an opportunity for the agri-food sector to move away from synthetics and towards biological alternatives to increase agri-systems resilience: a key part of the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s mission in driving forward innovation for sustainable food production. The aim of these early-stage trials is the demonstration that restoring microbial interactions, which are typically lost from soilless production systems, brings significant benefits for lettuce establishment and yields.