Recent technical advances including decreasing sequencing costs and improving computing power have triggered an explosion of interest in microbiome research and innovation, spanning across human, animal, and plant health. Probiotics are already widely applied in traditional soil-based agriculture, accepted as beneficial microorganisms playing a key role in crop yield and quality, and even conferring resistance to pathogen outbreaks. Yet, when it comes to controlled and semi-controlled environment agriculture (CEA), CEA growers report poor efficacy from existing products discovered in soil and translated into a soilless environment, where they potentially face poor survival rates. Furthermore, to mitigate against the risk of potentially catastrophic plant or human pathogen outbreaks, CEA growers are forced to target a sterile environment. However, this drive for sterility results in even lower levels of beneficial microbes, negatively impacting CEA productivity, profitability, and resilience. CEA growers, particularly those in the UK and Europe, also continue to face the challenge of high energy prices, with energy costs contributing up to 40% of CEA farm costs, exacerbated by recent price rises threatening regional economic viability. Founded in 2021 by Dr Paul Rutten (PhD in plant-microbe interactions from the University of Oxford; MBA and Entrepreneur First alumni), Concert Bio is developing a microbiome optimisation platform for CEA growers. The platform combines high-throughput sequencing-based monitoring with environmental and probiotic interventions to maximise resource-efficient, low-emission CEA crop production and minimise wasted operational costs through improving productivity, sustainability, and resilience. Our technology addresses 6 UN Sustainable Development Goals: 2 (Zero Hunger), 5 (Gender Equality), 9 (Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure), 12 (Responsible Consumption/Production), 13 (Climate Action), 15 (Life on Land), and aligns with the UK's net-zero agriculture 2040 ambition. Through Innovate UK support and aligned private investment, Concert Bio will harness the power of the microbiome to transform CEA. The project timeliness is extremely high, with the energy crisis placing further pressure on CEA growers to increase productivity, profitability, and resilience in the face of rising operational costs. The UK is uniquely placed to take a global leadership position in CEA, benefitting from a strong academic research base in microbiome science and already home to several of the world's largest CEA farms. Ultimately, successful project outcomes will prove transformational for the CEA sector, establishing world-leading CEA capacity and driving the production of resource-efficient, low-emission CEA crops, reducing horticulture imports and driving technology exports, demonstrating global UK leadership.

Total controlled-environment agriculture (TCEA) is a novel food production system that offers a sustainable and scalable alternative to traditional soil-based agriculture. Although immune to many soil diseases, TCEA systems remain susceptible to plant pathogens, with outbreaks causing catastrophic impacts since pathogens (particularly water-borne pathogens) can spread easily and affect entire crops. In addition, rigorous TCEA cleaning and sanitising protocols employed to eliminate human and plant pathogens also eliminate beneficial microbes. These beneficial microbes, widespread in soil but often eradicated in the soilless context of TCEA, are increasingly recognised as performing a vital role in plant performance in terms of both yield and quality. Concert Bio is developing a microbiome optimisation platform for TCEA growers, which combines next-generation sequencing-based monitoring with environmental and probiotic interventions to maximise resource-efficient, low-emission TCEA crop production and minimise wasted operational costs through improving productivity, sustainability, and resilience. Our academic partner Professor Thomas Bell is a world expert in microbial ecology, whose research focuses on understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that modify microbial communities and make them susceptible to invasion. He is also the Founder and Director of the £10m Leverhulme Centre for the Holobiont at Imperial College London. Innovate UK funding supports the development of a new formal collaborative R&D relationship between Concert Bio and Imperial College London, combining Concert Bio's expertise in TCEA microbiome sequencing and biocomputational modelling with Professor Thomas Bell's expertise in studying microbial community invasions. The project timeliness is extremely high, with the energy crisis placing further pressure on TCEA growers to increase productivity, profitability, and resilience in the face of rising operational costs. The UK is uniquely placed to take a global leadership position in TCEA, benefitting from a strong academic research base in microbiome science and already home to several of the world's largest TCEA farms. Although we will expand the developed microbiome monitoring and optimisation service across leafy greens, microgreens, and herbs, we have chosen lettuce as our target study crop because of: (i) Market relevance: Lettuce accounts for approximately 20% of the global TCEA market. (ii) Food safety criticality: Lettuce and other leafy greens have been linked to multiple E. coli outbreaks worldwide, causing illness and deaths. (iii) High risk of water-borne pathogens: Root diseases cause global TCEA lettuce crop losses of up to 30%. (iv) Rapid seed-to-harvest time: TCEA lettuce benefits from year-round growing season and 20-day seed-to-harvest time, enabling efficient optimisation of probiotic interventions.

Concert Bio is a start-up (UK SME) founded in 2021 by Dr Paul Rutten MBA (synthetic biologist; PhD in plant-microbe interactions from the University of Oxford; Entrepreneur First). We are developing a full-stack microbiome optimisation platform for controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) growers, which combines sequencing-based monitoring with environmental and probiotic interventions to maximise sustainable CEA crop production and minimise wasted operational costs through improving productivity, sustainability, and resilience. Founded in 2013, GrowUp Farms (UK SME, now part of Vescor Group) is a leading CEA grower based in England. GrowUp Farms latest CEA farm, Pepperness (Sandwich, Kent), will start supplying salad greens to UK supermarket shelves from early 2023\. With Innovate UK support, Concert Bio will develop a microbiome monitoring and optimisation service to improve productivity, sustainability, and resilience in CEA. Working with GrowUp Farms, Concert Bio will develop and validate the benefits of microbiome monitoring and optimisation, focusing initially on CEA lettuce. Successful project outcomes will bring significant benefits to CEA growers in England through increasing crop performance and sustainability

Facing a climate crisis, soil degradation, water scarcity and population/land use pressures, hydroponics is booming. Hydroponic farming enables worldwide, year-round, high-productivity, soil-less, climate-resilient growth of fresh produce, with reduced land use, water, pesticide, and fertiliser consumption, reducing carbon emissions compared to traditional agriculture. However, compared to traditional farming, hydroponic farming introduces two significant operational challenges: (i) Hydroponic crops are susceptible to water-borne pathogens. Since water is recirculated within the hydroponic system and connects all the plants, water-borne diseases spread easily and can destroy entire crops. Furthermore, soil-less farming eliminates most of the microbes found in the microbiota of plants grown in soil. Recent work has shown that many of these missing microbes confer crop disease resistance, and their absence can make outbreaks catastrophic. In hydroponic lettuce, up to 30% of the global crop is lost to root diseases. (ii) Energy consumption is high because of heating and cooling loads, supplemental artificial lighting, and circulating pumps. Compared to conventionally farmed lettuce, hydroponic lettuce has 11 times higher yields, but requires 82 times more energy. Energy costs contribute up to 40% of hydroponic farm costs; this figure is only exacerbated by price instability and the energy crisis, threatening economic viability for growers. These two challenges are intrinsically linked since high crop losses drive unproductive energy consumption. Concert Bio is a start-up (UK SME) founded in 2021 by Dr Paul Rutten MBA (synthetic biologist; PhD in plant-microbe interactions from the University of Oxford; Entrepreneur First). We are developing a full-stack microbiome optimisation platform for hydroponic growers, which combines sequencing-based monitoring with probiotic interventions to maximise sustainable hydroponic crop production and minimise wasted operational costs through improving yield and increasing disease resistance. With Smart funding, we will leverage our sequencing-based monitoring to develop the world's first probiotic to confer disease resistance in hydroponic lettuce.