Urban horticulture: from vertical farming to planting design
The number of people living in urban and peri-urban areas are increasing world-wide.
Consumers demand year-round healthy, tasty, and affordable food that is produced sustainably. This puts further demand on our food system. How can we produce fresh fruits and vegetables that meet the demand of the consumers? How can we produce fresh nutritional horticultural produce in a sustainable way? How can we integrate food production in an (peri-)urban environment, create circular economy connecting waste streams and integrate the production systems in the (peri-)urban landscape?
Greening cities have a lot of advantages besides production and resilience: water retention preventing flooding during heavy rains, reducing heat island temperatures in summer, absorbing dust and noise. Citizens demand quality and accessible public space and a healthy environment. How can we create a new, more sustainable urban landscape? How the planting design responds to the new urban policies and to the climate change? How we adapt our esthetics to the ethical and environmental pressures, from the low maintenance landscape to diminished use of water or pesticides?
This multidisciplinary symposium deals with all the different aspects of urban horticulture, from food production in high-tech vertical farms as well as low-tech systems, integrating food production systems in urban areas to sustainable landscapes, quality public spaces and adapted planting design.
Main topics
Vertical farming
- how to control quantity and quality of plant food by controlling the environment of the vertical farm
- Physiology of plants in relation to environmental conditions.
- Breeding for vertical farming
- Climate control
- Energy saving
- Automation
- Economics
- Architecture
- Integration in the urban area
- Circularity
Planting design
- How to use native plants in our public and private landscapes
- Resilient planting design
- Urban ecosystems
- Urban landscape
- Low resources consume and water saving
- Low maintenance plant
- New aesthetical models
- Climate control
- Economics
- Participatory design
For abstract submission, an active ISHS membership is needed (https://www.ishs.org/members).
If you are not yet an ISHS member and want to pay the membership within the Congress fee (https://ehc.usamv.ro/congress-participant/) – (Non ISHS members, including ACTA), you can ask for a voucher to secretariat@ehc.usamv.ro. Your membership will be active and you can submit the abstracts.
For more information/details please contact secretariat@ehc.usamv.ro
Ioana Tudoara is an architect with master degrees in Urban Form and Urban Socio-Anthropology and a PhD in Urban Sociology, teaching Landscape Architecture at the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest (USAMV), Landscape Department, Faculty of Horticulture since 1998
Prof Dr Leo Marcelis is head of the chair group Horticulture and Product Physiology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. This group holds a strong position in research and education on greenhouse horticulture, vertical farming and post-harvest quality
His research focuses on sustainable production of high quality products in vertical farms and greenhouses; Leo has a strong background in plant physiology, crop monitoring, computational modelling and experimentation. He has extensively studied the physiology, growth and development of plants in order to improve sustainability and quality of crop production in greenhouses and vertical farms. In particular fluxes of assimilates, water and nutrients in the plant, sink/source interactions and partitioning among plant organs in response to abiotic constraints are subject of study. LED lighting is a major theme in his research. At the moment he is leading large multidisciplinary research programmes on vertical farming and greenhouse crop production in which universities and private companies cooperate.
Prof Trine Hvoslef-Eide is one of the founders of the Master program in Circular Urban Agriculture at the
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). The program is based upon the Horizon2020 project
Sino-European Green and Smart Cities (SiEUGreen 2018-2022). She holds a master of Horticulture and a
PhD in Applied Biotechnology from NMBU. Thus, she has a broad horticultural background combined
with many of the modern methods of biotechnology for promoting a sustainable future. She teaches
courses in Urban Agriculture and Biotechnology for al levels of students from bachelor, master and PhD
levels. She is the leader of the National Centre for Urban Agriculture (NCUA) in Norway and the NMBU
Sustainability Arena Green and Smart Cities. NMBU also has a show case originating from SiEUGreen
demonstrating the circularity of black- and greywater from 48 student dormitories to a custom made
biogas reactor producing methane and CO2, the digestate is cleansed and made into various products
for crop production in the form of nutrients and/or growth media. These products are tested in a closed
bubble greenhouse for tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. Then they are analysed for various pollutants
in the eatable products to validate if this circularity is safe in a circular city.
Anna Karin Rosberg (Sweden); Chieri Kubota (United States); Dafni Avgoustaki (Greece); Eleni Athanasiadou (Greece); Endre Kentelky (Romania); Eri Hayashi (Japan); Genhua Niu (United States); Máire Nic an Bhaird (Ireland); Mira Lehberger (Germany); Mehdi Sharifyazdi (Norway); Oliver Körner (Germany); Qichang Yang (China); Roberta Cucca (Norway); Silvana Nicola (Italy); Toyoki Kozai (Japan); Svetlana Anisimova, University of Forestry (Bulgaria)
