Dyson creates a high-tech greenhouse for growing strawberries

Dyson Farming, the agricultural division of the renowned British hair dryer and vacuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson, has opened a 26-acre greenhouse in Carrington, Lincolnshire. The greenhouse is capable of supplying 1,250 tons of premium strawberries to the market each year. The berries ripen in early spring and late fall thanks to renewable electricity and heat from a neighboring biogas complex, reducing the need for imports.

This information is available on the Dyson Farming website.

Here's how Dyson's glass farm works

The 760-meter-long greenhouse houses 1,456 rows of 1,225,000 plants that grow under computerized climate control. The system automatically regulates the temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide supply. It also stores rainwater collected from the roof in a lagoon for irrigation. Suspended chutes swing from side to side, increasing the yield by 15% without expanding the area.

The greenhouse receives energy and heat from two Dyson Farming anaerobic digesters. Waste from the fields is broken down by microorganisms to produce gas, which powers turbines with enough capacity to supply 10,000 households. The byproduct, digestate, is returned to the fields as an organic fertilizer. The heat and carbon dioxide are piped to the glassworks.

The most notable innovation is the 5.5-meter-high hybrid vertical system resembling giant Ferris wheels. Two aluminum platforms continuously rotate the plant trays, providing uniform illumination of the entire column and increasing planting density by 250%. In winter, LED panels illuminate the crops, and ultraviolet light is used at night to inhibit mold growth without chemicals.

Robotic pickers that use computer vision to assess the ripeness of the fruit are also being introduced. These pickers carefully cut the fruit and immediately send it to the packaging center and cold storage. This ensures that the strawberries reach consumers as fresh as possible.

Earlier, we wrote about 5 tech innovations that changed everyday life forever — it's important to remember that major transformations start with an idea, go through the prototype stage, and then become commonplace elements of everyday life. Many technologies that we now take for granted actually had a long and difficult road to mass adoption.

Also, we reported that Chinese scientists set a new record for the fastest laser communication speed from geostationary orbit at 1 Gbps, which is five times faster than Starlink. They achieved this with only two watts of radiation, equivalent to the output of a nightlight. Their experiment demonstrated that data can be delivered to Earth in less than five seconds, even through a stormy atmosphere.