Strawberry production by indoor hydroponic farming in Northern Canada

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The Growcer has proven vertical farming systems utilizing hydroponic and LED technology as a highly efficient means of**producing food affordably, particularly in northern regions where soil is not available due to permafrost and where perishables are**costly due to long supply chains. Strawberries are a food cited by many communities in food insecure areas as a favourite of**residents, by retailers as particularly difficult to source, and by growers as difficult to cultivate at a commercial scale. Specifically,**strawberries are hard to cultivate from seed and fruiting plants are most often created from "runners", or the process of having new**plants develop vegetatively from the rhizomes (horizontal stems) of mature plants. There are many suppliers of ready-to-grow**strawberry runners but all suppliers sell runners cultivated in soil, a process that carries a high potential for the introduction of plant**pathogens to a sterile hydroponics system and risk to the entire indoor farm. Therein lies an opportunity to offer options for**strawberries to our northern customers, and we are proposing further research to develop methods for indoor hydroponic**strawberry production.