Changhyeon Kim, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture has established a research program in controlled environmental agriculture (CEA) at the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR).
This program supports graduate and undergraduate research training with an eye towards a more robust agricultural industry in Connecticut.
CEA has been around for decades. Simply put, CEA is a system that controls the conditions in which crops grow. Greenhouses are the oldest and best-known CEA systems.
“Unlike field-based agriculture, it is actually quite an engineering-intensive approach,” Kim says. “But typically, it has a much higher yield and better crop quality.”
CEA allows growers to have a more reliable harvest as they are not subject to environmental conditions in the same way as field-based agriculture. This is a growing concern as climate change is making weather patterns more volatile. CEA can also reduce water and chemical inputs.
Connecticut has a robust greenhouse sector, comprising 48% of the state’s agricultural industry. But the state has been slower to take up CEA for food production due to its larger relative energy demand and tight economic margins.
Source : uconn.edu