How Vertical Farming Helps Prevent Yield Loss from Disease
There are many ways that vertical farming helps protect crops and boost yields, including protecting plants from crop diseases. This is a significant bonus since agricultural businesses and family farms live and die based on crop yield numbers. Learn more about how this method of farming staves off crop diseases below.
What Is Vertical Farming?
Vertical farming is the act of growing crops stacked vertically in trays or towers, rather than traditional farming where crops are planted in long low rows on the ground. One major benefit of this method is that you can grow more crops in a smaller space. Another is that you can grow crops indoors, away from many factors that cause crop loss.
Common Crop Diseases
Most common crop diseases are fungal, but some are viral or caused by other sources. Here are a few of the most common crop diseases that may lead to crop yield loss.
Fungal
Black Spot – This common fungus causes black spots to develop on leaves, eventually turning them yellow and causing them to drop off. While it won’t typically kill the plants it infests, it will ruin their foliage.
Damping-Off Disease – Soil-borne fungi are to blame for this one. It attacks seedlings, keeping them from taking root and causing them to collapse and die. It’s most common in soil-growing greenhouses.
Fusarium Wilt – Also a soil-borne fungus, this one rots the roots of a plant, causing stunted growth and sometimes black stems.
Powdery Mildew – the dusty white coating you may see on leaves is a telltale sign of this fungal disease.
Rust – This fungus causes orange spots on the leaves and stems of the plants it infests. Eventually, the spots will turn black, causing the leaves to die and drop off.
Sooty Mold – Many insects that infest crops feed on the sap inside the leaves and stems of the plant. This leaves behind a sticky substance that can then be host to a fungus that turns the leaf black and prevents it from photosynthesizing sunlight.
Verticillium Wilt – Soil-borne fungi that enter the plant through the root can cause verticillium wilt. This causes branches to weaken and wilt suddenly on otherwise healthy plants and can stunt overall growth.
Viral
Mosaic Virus – Rather than being a specific virus, this is actually a collection of different viruses which attack various types of plants. They cause yellowed leaves, stunted plant growth, and reduced yield overall.
Various Plant-Specific Viruses – There are many varying viruses that attack specific plants or plant families. Some of the most common are plum pox virus, tomato yellow leaf curl virus, and potato virus X.
Other
Downy Mildew – This disease is caused by microorganisms that are often confused for fungi, but are a separate type of problem entirely. Characteristic symptoms include discoloration of the top of leaves alongside white or gray mold on the bottom.
How Vertical Farming Helps Prevent Diseases
You may have noticed that quite a few of the diseases listed above are caused by soil-borne pathogens. Vertical farms are typically either hydroponic or aeroponic, meaning that plants are grown without soil. Of course, the cause and effect of this are simple: no soil means no soil-borne pathogens. This alone cuts way back on the number of diseases that could attack your crops.
Another means of infection involves pests that attack your plants and leave them vulnerable to pathogens in the air or water. While it is still possible (though less common) for some pests to infest your greenhouse in a vertical farm, this is far less common indoors. Additionally, indoor vertical farms are usually more closely monitored than vast expanses of land outdoors. This means pests are typically spotted and dealt with more quickly in a controlled indoor environment. It also means diseases can be quickly identified and the affected plants isolated to prevent spread.
Overall, vertical farming may not completely eliminate crop diseases, but it does cut them down significantly and allows farmers to spot and treat them far quicker than in typical traditional farming operations. If you’d like to learn more about growing commercial crops in an indoor vertical farming environment, RSVP for a virtual tour of an Eden Green Technology facility. We’ll be happy to show you how our hydroponic farms work and how they can work for you.