US-based Oishii Farm opens western Tokyo R&D centre for indoor farming
Working with Japanese partners, the US-based grower will develop robots and air-conditioning systems while aiming to sell strawberries in Japan as early as this year.
- US-based Oishii Farm has opened a new research and development center for indoor farming in Hamura, western Tokyo.
- The center's purpose is to advance mass production, improve productivity, and explore the cultivation of new crops in plant factories.
- It will focus on developing technologies like robotics and specialized air-conditioning systems in collaboration with Japanese businesses.
- Strawberries cultivated at the new facility could be sold in the Japanese market as early as this year.
Strawberries cultivated at Oishii Farm Corporation’s new centre in Hamura, western Tokyo, could reach the Japanese market as early as this year, the US-based company announced when it inaugurated the facility on Wednesday (August 5).
The research hub has been established to advance mass production, lift productivity and explore the cultivation of new fruit and vegetables in plant factories.
Oishii Farm, which produces and sells strawberries in the United States, intends to pursue this work in collaboration with Japanese businesses that have advanced agricultural and industrial technologies.
Work at the centre will involve developing robots and air-conditioning systems for plant factories, alongside studies of seeds and seedlings suited to cultivation in such facilities.
At the opening ceremony, Oishii Farm chief executive Hiroki Koga said the field could become an industry worth 100 trillion yen.
If Japan secured a leading role, he said, it could be “one of the biggest winners this century”.
Akira Shimada, president and chief executive of telecommunications group NTT, Inc., an Oishii Farm partner, said he sincerely hoped the facility would develop into “a base for exporting future agriculture”.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
