Robotic mushroom picking and strawberry forecasting among initial Ceres Agri-Tech spin-outs
Robotic mushroom picking, strawberry yield forecasting and new bio-based materials to drive down the carbon footprint of car manufacturing are the focus of the first three companies to emerge from projects funded by a Cambridge-led partnership, Ceres Agri-Tech.
Launched in 2018 with funding from Research England, the partnership’s aim is to commercialise innovative agri-tech based on university research.
Led by by Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, Ceres brings together the universities of Cambridge, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, Lincoln and Reading with three agricultural research institutes - NIAB, Rothamsted Research and the John Innes Centre.
The first spin-out, Agaricus Robotics, is developing a machine that can harvest even the most challenging dense clusters of mushrooms.
The market for fresh mushrooms in the UK is thought to be worth around £450million and growing annually. But, until now, the picking has had to be done by hand to prevent damage to the delicate mushrooms, as existing robotic harvesters are not suitable for mushrooms.
Agaricus Robotics founder Bashir Al Diri, said: “In the UK alone, approximately 4,500 people are required every day to pick mushrooms – with labour costs representing a third of total production costs.
“It takes up to six months to train a picker and their skill determines the productivity of each mushroom bed. But our patented intelligent mushroom harvesting robot can pick whole crops without bruising the mushrooms and will lead to 20 to 30 per cent yield increases from optimised 24/7 harvesting 365 days a year. The backing of Ceres is proving invaluable as we now accelerate the commercialisation of our technology.”
While robotic pickers have long provoked concerns over jobs, there is currently a major shortage in the labour market - a problem the industry says has been exacerbated by Brexit.
The second new arrival from Cere is FruitCast. This focuses on strawberry yield improvements, with an innovative forecasting system used to measure individual fruit numbers, along with the weight and maturity state of millions of berries each day. This data is combined with weather forecasts in algorithms to predict yield with unrivalled accuracy six weeks ahead of existing systems.
“The UK produces 120,000 tonnes of strawberries each year, with a retail value of £659 million,” said Fruitcast founder Raymond Kirk. “Predicting the timing and yield of strawberries is critical for the industry – but extremely difficult to do accurately. Thanks to the support of Ceres, we are creating a system that will not only benefit strawberry growers through improved sales but also reduce supply chain friction and crop waste.”
The third of the initial batch of Ceres companies is Cellexcel, which has developed a novel industrial-scale patented process to make water-resistant materials from flax. The global market for composites – materials made from resin-reinforced fibres – in car manufacturing is predicted to reach nearly £20billion by 2024. But the most popular composites, such as fibreglass and carbon fibre, are non-renewable and energy intensive to produce.
”Replacing fibreglass and carbon fibre with renewable bio-based materials like flax promises to increase sustainability and reduce carbon footprints, as well as improving vehicle safety – as bio-composites do not shatter on impact,” said Cellexcel co-founder Richard Stephenson. “With the help of Ceres, our novel process is now set to drive down the carbon footprint of car manufacturing and add value to agricultural products and agricultural waste.”
Ceres Agri-Tech director Dr Louise Sutherland said: “The launch of our first three spin-out companies is evidence of the success of the Ceres collaboration and testament to the quality of agri-tech innovation in UK universities. Alongside our commercialisation work with other projects in our pipeline, we are now also embarking on the next phase of Ceres and exploring new funding opportunities to enable us to accelerate our supply of innovative solutions to address the agri-tech problems of today and tomorrow.”
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