Going green with gusto

Every restaurant and deli owner knows it’s a constant headache ensuring there’s a daily fresh supply of tasty and healthy food products for their customers. It’s a challenge, dealing with suppliers, deliveries, and markets. Costly too.

One of the ways to deal with this problem is to grow your own produce – and what better way to do that than right where you need it. Indoor urban farming in your own basement or rooftop garden cuts out the problem of transport too. Greener greens, on the spot.

With limited space, you need to go high-tech, using hydroponics and LED lighting for 24-hour growth cycles and optimum nutrition. But it’s still not fast enough. Farming takes time. Or does it?

Thanks to MIT protein engineers, we now have bioengineered enzymes that supercharge photosynthesis, the process plants use to convert light into energy for growth. This means improved crop yields, and much faster growing cycles. Combined with controlled environment methods, edible crops are typically ready to be harvested in half the time.

Which means you’re never short of fresh daily produce, and your customers don’t have to wait for nature to take its course. Commercial farmers are winning too, with better yields and healthier, more robust plants. And that’s good for food security.

Boosting photosynthesis with better enzymes has given new meaning to ‘fast food’!