Engineering for Intensive Cropping Production of medicinal plants in vertical farming systems - op-portunity or utopia?

The demand for medicinal plants is constantly increasing, partly due to global population growth. The majority of medicinal plants traded worldwide originate from wild collections, which in turn are under threat due to increased extraction. Climate change will exacerbate the pressure on wild populations and on plants grown outdoors. Despite the high initial effort, we consider the cultivation of new plants and the shift towards a more sustainable production of cultivated species, to be crucial. The spatial and seasonal independence of production using vertical farming systems could offer ideal conditions for the design of newly formed supply chains, as well as for long-term availability of raw materials with high quality. The aim of our joint research project VerticalPharm is to identify further potential.