Fab Five: The CEA Team at UGA

Welcome back to Urban Pods! In this episode, your host, Dr. Ruchika Kashyap, dives deep into the dynamic world of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), addressing common questions like: “What exactly is CEA?” and “Can a backyard hoop house be considered CEA?”

Dr. R. is joined by the UGA CEA Fab Five, a powerhouse team of experts from the University of Georgia, who are leading the charge in CEA research, extension, and innovation. They discuss the broad spectrum of CEA—from simple high tunnels to advanced indoor vertical farms—and how it’s revolutionizing food production, resource utilization, and even space exploration.

The discussion explores the diverse backgrounds of CEA growers, the differences between breeding for the field versus CEA, and the critical importance of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and disease management in these closed systems. Our experts also share how their individual research pillars—Crop Physiology, Plant Breeding, Entomology (IPM), and Phenomics—are converging to create predictable, profitable, and sustainable recipes for the future of urban and controlled agriculture.This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the science, technology, and business of growing fresh, local food in a controlled environment

Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Urban Pods, where science meets people and innovation turns into real action, all in the vibrant world of urban and controlled environment agriculture. I'm your host, Dr. Ruchika Kashyap, or just Dr. R if you prefer assistant professor and extension specialist of urban and controlled environment, plant pathology at University of Georgia.

In our last episode, we had the absolute pleasure of meeting the amazing team from the Center of Urban Agriculture here at UGA. Their mission. It's all about bridging the gap between city living and sustainable farming. They shared their stories, their roles, the awesome certification programs they run, and their vision for building a healthier, greener future.

One thing they talked about in something very close to my heart is controlled environment ag, also called CEA. You see my role here covers helping growers and communities manage plant disease challenges in both urban agriculture and CEA, using applied research to find real world practical solutions.

Every time I mention CEA, people ask me, what exactly is CEA? Is a hoop house considered CEA? How about a traditional greenhouse? What if it's a backyard garden but has a covered poly house for production or a vertical farm growing out of a mall wall? And honestly, every time I just want to smile and say It's all right in some way.

CEA is one of the most exciting conversations happening in agriculture right now, but it can also feel a little overwhelming or confusing. People wonder, can a rural farmer use CEA? Can a community gardener build a small CEA system in their backyard? Can a homeowner use these setups to grow fresh food in their kitchens?

And if I want to start to see CEA based business, what kind of investment do I need? What about scaling it up for larger production? Any challenges that I should be aware of? There are so many questions and we will try to answer some of them. Honestly, these are exactly the kind of questions we should be asking because CEA can help in providing fresh local food and isn't that all what we want?

The good news is CEA doesn't have restrictions. It can absolutely be a DIY project from something simple in your backyard to fully automated mechanized system for commercial production. But understanding the basics, knowing the vision behind the industry, and learning about the research happening in CEA right now.

That's where it all starts to answer these questions and curiosities. To help us dive deeper into all of these, I'm beyond excited to introduce you to some incredible guest today, a powerhouse team of experts who are leading the charge in controlled environment agriculture at University of Georgia.

I couldn't be more thrilled to introduce four key figures from our CEA program at UGA and when I include myself in this incredible group, I like to call us the Fab five. This name was actually suggested by Dr. Rhuanito Ferrarezi, and I couldn't just resist using it. Joining me today are Dr. Rhuanito Ferrarezi, CEA, crop physiologist, Dr. Andrew Ogden, CEA, breeder, Dr. Eric Schoeller, CEA entomologist, and Dr. Zhihang Song, CEA Phenomics expert here at UGA. These experts make up an incredible team at UGA, leading the charge in advancing controlled environment, agriculture, and helping shape the future of urban farming. Welcome everyone to Urban Pods.

 Thank you, Ruchika. Excited to be here. Same here. 

Let's start by getting to know all of you a little better. Would you all like to introduce yourself and tell us what you do at UGA and maybe a fun fact about you? Let's start with you, Dr. Ferrarezi. 

I'm an associate professor of CEA Crop Physiology and production at the Department of Horticulture.

A fun fact about me is that I love football so much that I started a very large, uh, tailgate party to bring over scientists, growers, friends, family altogether to learn more about science on a much less formal way. 

That's amazing. I'm pretty sure the parties are well attended.

Dr. Zhihang Song. 

Hi Ruchika. Thank you for introducing me into this group. So my name is Zhihang Song. I'm a assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture at UGA. My specialist in controlling environment agriculture, omics. A fun fact about myself, although I'm in horticulture department, but I'm actually an agricultural engineer by training.

I build stuff and I also fix stuff that's how engineers doing their work. So I like working with my friends too, to have a fun project. We used to build up a little defense system for our bedroom. 'cause our cat used to run into our bedroom, like by no surprise, we build up a defense system to prevent the cat into our bedroom, as a hobby, when I have free time.

I think that's pretty handy in CEA structure building but we are all doing it in some way in our programs and research. . Building D-I-Y-C-E-A for research too.

Dr. Eric Schoeller. Yeah. 

Hi there. My name is Eric Schoeller.

I'm an assistant professor, in the Department of Entomology, and my specialization is integrated pest management in controlled environments. I started here at UGA in August of 23. One fun fact about myself is I'm an avid traveler. I am trying to finish up here in the US here in the next couple years.

I'm currently at 47 outta the 50 states. Have a trip planned in a couple years in going to Alaska on a sort of a cruise. So that should get me very close to my final number, 

which is the final state. You've not been so far. 

Just I'm missing Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii.

That's pretty amazing. That's something good to have on your to-do list, Dr. Andrew Ogden. 

Thank you, Ruchika. My name is Andrew Ogden. I'm an assistant professor of plant breeding. I'm in the Department of Horticulture and I also have an appointment in the Institute for Plant Breeding Genetics and Genomics.

And my main job is to breed new horticulture cultivars for CEA systems. Fun fact about myself. I spent a lot of time living in the tropics. I speak Spanish. I spent, several years living in a remote part of Costa Rica in the mountains. 

What was the best part about living there? 

For me, the best part was the trying different tropical fruit and growing tropical fruit.

And that's why a breeder to close the Fab Five Loop, I can patch in and talk about my work. I am the plant pathologist in this group and I work on plant disease challenges caused in the controlled environment systems. This might include fungal CE and bacterial diseases and anything that's basically killing your plant.

That is biotic.



Thank you all. I really loved all those interesting facts about each of you.

The Fab five group, the team that's bringing in CEA at UGA in the forefront, and then putting all the pieces together. There are different disciplines that we work on, but honestly, the basic question still remains on what is CEA? So let's start with this basic question.

What exactly is CEA, what do each of you think of it? Dr. Ferrarezi. 

Sure. Yes. As you mentioned previously, there is no right or and wrong way. To define, what CEA means. So to me, that refers to the production systems that we can use to grow crops, other than the open field.

So that means growing in different types of greenhouses. They be hoophouses meat tech, high-tech greenhouses, or even at the well-known, indoor vertical farms. Those warehouses, those buildings that use, sole source lighting. To me, then NCEA refers to that. So whoever is growing plants in an environment that is different than one that receives, sunlight, naturally indirectly, that is exposed to rain and other elements, so can be considered somehow a controlled environment.

So within those, we can have many different names, nomenclature systems, and for that reason, since we mainly don't use soil for the cultivation, that is why CEA systems are usually related to hydroponics systems. There's a lot of confusion there because it doesn't mean that all hydroponics, cultivation systems are CEA, not even the other way around.

So you mentioned anything but soil. So what other ways of production do we adopt in CEA? 

Sure. When I first started my career.

We often use the term protected agriculture much more than ca you know, this is pre 2010, more or less. And you started hearing the term CEA more and more as, we got closer to present and protected agriculture. We consider that simply modifying the natural environment for production of agriculture.

And within that scope, we had things such as reflective mulches and roll covers and things like that. Anything that helps promote the production of those plants in the environment they are. And I think CEA fits within that umbrella of protected agriculture, which is a much more intensive, modification of the environment to grow crops.

With the ultimate goal, I think being either extending the growing season of those crops or growing crops in areas that . Some of the benefits are, really helping with resource utilization and reducing inputs of those crop production. But, we talked about food crops in CEA, but personally I also consider ornamental crops that are grown in protective structures also CEA even though those typically aren't grown hydroponically.

They are a crop that's being grown in a modified environment. I consider both ornamental crops and food crops part of cea. 

 that's a very good point you brought up that, even though we say it's soil less, but a high tunnel is in soil, so there can be both types of production, if we want to consider it in a protected environment umbrella

.

Even ornamentals and greenhouses are typically grown in soil pots



that's why I consider CEA, the production system itself, the cover is not necessarily the media that you use because then your point makes total sense, right? So we are talking about a facility that is covered, but the crops are growing.

Soil. So that's why it is not a necessarily a hydroponic system per definition because you can still use oil. 

Yeah, I like to think of CEA as occurring on a spectrum of control. And to me controlled environment agriculture is the use of technology to optimize the environment for our crop production.

And some systems you're able to exert a small amount of control, like the high tunnel or hoop house that we're talking about. Some you're exerting more control like in a greenhouse, and then some you're, you really have control over almost all of your environmental variables, and that's the indoor vertical farms.

So I do like to think of it as a occurring on a spectrum of levels of control. 

You mentioned technology, that's definitely one of an important pillars, right? 

Yeah, definitely. To my understanding from the perspective of technology, controlled environment agriculture is a series of technologies that allow us to grow our food in the weld controlled place.

From that perspective, it is one of the representative technology that have been developed through our civilization that enables human beings to, have a stable food supply and also a better, food quality actually. And also that help us to overcome some severe weather conditions.

It almost ignoring the climate change, microclimate changes around us, but we can provide, food to both urban or rural areas. Fresh vegetables and beautiful flowers, fresh, fruits for our people. This is the great progress through our civilization.

So, from my perspective, there are many technologies and engineering innovations happening in the background. Things like how we control our things precisely how we control our things automatically without costing a lot of labors or introducing more risks to, to this production.

Yeah, it feels like our plants are living in a luxury hotel that we provide everything they need, or we need just some food from them. 

That's a nice perspective, giving plants the best service that's CEA. And then when we talk about giving best service, you mentioned civilizations.

We are thinking about civilizations that CEA could, help in producing fresh fruit and taking food from farm to market, or farm to fork But how about going beyond, civilizations and future generations, basically? Thinking of that what do you think about CEA innovations helping in space projects and, not just our home yard or backyard, 

that is why CEA.

First intended for, right? So if you look over the history of hydroponics and how this became a very popular industry was because the pioneer work done initially to guarantee that we could produce food in different environments. So the work that was done by NASA in the seventies really helped boosting the name of hydroponic systems and that merged with larger systems that became commercial.

So it's very nice to see that this space exploration and certainly food production to guarantee that astronauts and why not people exploring other places would have access to fresh nutritious food. And I believe that then helped glamorizing the term and made these actually well known by the general public.

' cause if we look over on the history of these controlled systems, so they were really tailoring, space research, the potential for food production. And then we had a movie that made growing potatoes in space. so everybody watched the Martian.

So then at the end of the day, we realize that it is feasible to grow crops, for outer space exploration, and then why not use it on earth? 



Since we can control the conditions, guarantee, resource utilization is adequate and most importantly for growers.

To bring the profitability that they need to maintain themselves in this space.

one of the interesting overlaps there as a plant breeder is, a lot of the goals would be quite similar too. If you're trying to breed plants for an indoor vertical farm, you want crops that are going to produce quickly, be small, statured, be loaded with as many nutrients as possible.

And so those sorts of goals for indoor growing really overlap nicely with if you were trying to grow plants in space, you would be dealing with a small area, you would want to have those crops produce quickly and you'd like to have as much nutrition, jammed into them as possible. So there's a nice overlap there with breeding for either indoor farms or for these, space systems which we are pursuing currently.

 definitely we've been talking about how diverse the systems are, but how diversely they can be grown in where they can be utilized, just highlighting this topic, I will have a podcast coming soon. The topic of the podcast is gonna be lunar harvest to local plates.

I wanna highlight how both these parallels are not so parallel, and the aim of both these ventures are basically to provide food, either to future generations or to present. Coming back to the diversity we are talking about diverse  ways of production, lot of people involved in CEA.

Come from diverse backgrounds so what kind of grower diversity you have seen in Georgia in your collaborations with growers, and industry, and also what kind of system diversity you've seen so far in your surveys ,   

So what I've seen is a very motivated group of people that have a very unique background in fields that are actually very different from standard agriculture. So I've seen, people that are very strong in the business side.

People that are very familiar with logistics, food distribution. They know the food chain. They know how food gets transported from point A to point B, and then they group together with people in marketing, with people in production. A lot of engineers are then designing systems that are tailored to adequate plant production.

So when you discuss with people that are working in this space, you'll see that they are migrating from different fields. That might be for example, mushroom production, that might be regular, business administration that had been related to sales. These people are bringing in innovation from other areas.

So they group a lot of intelligent individuals together, people that had been very successful on their regular businesses. And then they bring in the farmers, the growers, people that know how to grow a crop, that nutritious that has the size within the timeframe that they're interested on.

And they bring in a business model together that allows. Modifying the environment, controlling the production aspects, and guaranteeing that instead of producing based on the seasons and waiting to see what is going to happen. So they have full control of the production systems, allowing the agriculture enterprise to be like a plant factory.



Related to something that is predictable. Something that will yield a giving amount of produce at high quality. At the shortest time possible. 

And in order to run that factory, you need all these different pillars and each one of them is important. An engineer, a person who has knowledge of sales, marketing, production, food, safety, what kind of right crop to grow in.

If there are any challenges in terms of pests and diseases how do you manage it? So there's a lot going on.

I think in Georgia you have a good representation of all of the CEA facilities ranging from high tunnels all the way up to very large vertical farms and high tech greenhouses. There's been periods of growth where certain facilities have been booming and certain ones have fallen behind.

I think now in the past 10 years, we had a big growth in the higher tech greenhouse and vertical farms in Georgia. But you're seeing a resurgence now, again, in some of the more simpler structures. Mainly driven by the Natural Resource Conservation Services equip program which is aggressively trying to give small growers, high tunnel facilities.

I think in Atlanta alone in the last couple years, they've given out about 2000 high tunnels just in Fulton County. So that's been like the major growth we've seen in the last couple years. The larger, very expensive facilities have, not grown much, recently. And as Rhuantio said we've, we see a lot of venture capitalists and engineers and

tech people that have really pushed forward the more technologically and advanced CEA systems, but now are coming full circle again and seeing a big call for traditional growers to take up the mantle of CEA and get involved with that in Georgia.

 I agree, based on surveys that I did, there is range of growers and range of systems I've seen.

So it's also an added challenge if I look at it,  as researchers when it comes to collaborations. So how these different dynamics can be challenging.

 one observation I've made is, at least so far since I've been here, we have made a lot of efforts to reach out to CEA growers of all scales.

And the ones who have been the most, responsive to us so far have been the smaller growers as far as, interest in possibly collaborating on research or breeding. It seems that we're getting more interest from the smaller producers. The bigger companies in many cases are, franchises of large operations that have, growing greenhouses in many different states.

And I think a lot of them perhaps have their own internal r and d departments. They maybe don't see yet. The value of collaborating with universities. But we're hoping as we establish ourselves further, that some of these larger firms and operations will want to collaborate with us. 

that is a very good point, particularly because, certain operations think what they have is so unique and exclusive that they cannot show it to others. 



And concerning the systems that you asked previously. So we have a multitude of different ones that can be used, but plants are very simple organisms to an extent. they need light, they need oxygen, they need CO2, they need nutrients, they need water, and they need a media to anchor themselves.

So when we provide these six growing factors to plants, they will thrive in any environment. Even though there are a multitude of different systems out there, they all provide the six, what I call growing factors. So companies sometimes try to protect their systems and their processes, but at the end of the day, they are well known by the CEA, I would say industry.



So there are small modifications here and there, and I can see what Andrew's mentioning, sometimes, precaution. So people don't want to give a competitive advantage to somebody else that we won't lock something that takes years to figure it out. 



But I would like to add it on that, a lot of growers are then trying to arrange into wheel, putting a lot of money in certain technologies that.

Was already figured out by another company that we have access to and that's open source or within this group. So then having the ability to interact as a group and form a solid industry will help growers on the long run because then there is no need to do all r and d in-house. With such a large and competent group of individuals working in this space already.



Those are very good points you brought in and as you said, we are here to help in any way possible. And this podcast is also a way of showcasing not only the work we do, but showing that we are there to help, and work together.

this is shaping, right where I wanted to bring each of our works into play what we do at, UGA as a CEA team. When we talk about our individual roles, each of us has specific focus area, but it is crucial for the listeners to understand in layman or simpler terms, what we do and how we can help them.

So let's break it down for our listeners so that they can reach out to us. , Rhuanito, you specialize in crop physiology. What is crop physiology, and how is your program kind of helping in CEA production? 

I already gave a few hints of what crop physiology is, but I would like to indicate that crop physiology is this study of how plants, respond to a multitude of different, stimuli, they being abiotic or biotic.

So we are looking into, responses such as, water, nutrients, light. We also have the media hormones and a multitude of, responses that, make the plant metabolism to adjust quickly enough for the plants to continue driving and survive in a given environment. Crop physiology then is a very basic area of research that looks into, specific steps in metabolic pathways in responses that are morphological and that are physiological.

So I like to do the basic research to assist with the other part of my program that is the production, because we want to put all of the production factors together in a given environment and guarantee that then growers have a recipe.

Growers know what to do, what to use, and what not to use.

So if I understand correctly, if I mess up with any ingredient in the recipe, that will affect the production? 

Absolutely, yes. So then we want to guarantee that growers, colleagues, scientists, and others that are involved in plant production don't mess up.

So then we take all of that burden. To us. So we test everything that we can, and we assist people in producing the crops that they want, the stage that they're interested on. And most importantly with all of the production characteristics they're looking for concerning yield and quality.

 you adopt all these parameters in your research and try to give outcomes and suggest these recipes. And then you have a workforce, that's helping you do this ? 

Absolutely, yes. I have my amazing lab members that go from, a postdoc, talented graduate students, amazing undergraduate students that work at my lab that are getting trained over time into cry, physiology and production.

And they are going to be the next, employees for all the companies that we have here and beyond. So we also have a multitude of visitors,  interns and those people, they help me fulfill another mission of my program. So one is to do research. All right? And the other one is workforce development.

The overall goal is to guarantee that we are training people, all across the spectrum that, Andrew mentioned. Different production systems, different levels of knowledge. So we have from the beginner. Learner that is getting amazed because they saw a lettuce plant. 



Oh my gosh.

I put a seed on this particular tray and boom, Hey, I have a plant. That's my baby. 



Two of those top notch, scientists that are working in the lab, really making sense of secondary metabolites that are taking place inside the plant. That are responding to light, to uv, to other factors and most importantly, that will allow our growers the people that are putting CEA facilities in Georgia to have access to motivated, knowledgeable, and most importantly, people that have the passion and the drive for CEA that they can hire when they have openings. 

So what's the best way growers or public can utilize the information that's coming out of your research ?

I love that question because we always struggle with  publicizing our results, right? I believe the best way is to look for MyLab socio, media pages. So we have front Instagram to x , LinkedIn, which I think is the most, powerful one just because it's focused mainly on business related activities in Facebook.

I'm also a part of the southeast region of Fruit and Vegetable Conference. So every general area we meet in Savannah and we are establishing a CEA session there where we are bringing the latest, results from our programs and, most importantly, reaching out to me in my lab team, I don't have a formal extension appointment.

That means that, my interaction with growers is more limited than some of you are. And then perhaps, growers that wanted to work specifically in topics related to production could contact me directly through my email, that is just my last name, ferrarezi@uga.edu. And, really, ask me questions.

So I love to interact with people in guarantee that they have the baseline information to continue with their efforts. 

Thank you, Dr. Ferrarezi. That's amazing that you have all these platforms, for people to access, the information that you are putting out there .

Moving on to Andrew. Your work focuses on breeding crops for these environments, right? What are the biggest differences when it comes to breeding in field for field crops and CEA crops? 

Yeah. The overarching goal is to, breed some new cultivars that will perform really well in CEA systems.

And currently most CEA growers are depending on varieties that we're actually bred for field production and trying to adapt those into CEA operations. One advantage I see of CEA is there's a few less things that we have to worry about. We can exclude a lot of major insect pests just through exclusion netting.

So that's something that when you're breeding for field crops, we have to think about a lot is breeding resistance to insect pests. A lot of those we can simply physically exclude when we're breeding for field. We have to be prepared for a wide range of climates and soil types. Whereas in CEA,  we're optimizing the growing environment so we don't have to worry quite as much about, say drought stress because we're providing water at an optimal rate.

We don't have to worry about temperature stress if we're able to really tightly control the temperatures. So to me, it gives some opportunities to focus on characteristics that maybe have been ignored. Such as breeding for improved flavor, one of my goals is to breed varieties that are also outwardly very attractive and will stand out in the marketplace.

Coming back to some of the business ideas you mentioned. we can grow nearly anything in a controlled environment, but can it be profitable to produce?

Is the challenge. And having crops that can stand out in the marketplace because they're very attractive and have striking outward features, increased nutritional content. These are things that we can focus on now that we've eliminated. A lot of the concerns typically present in field situations. 



Which is not to say that, we get away completely from , thinking about things like plant disease.

Because, plant diseases still can arise in CEA systems, and so we do still need to, make sure that we have genetic resistance, ideally to some of the major pathogens that may arise. 



Fortunately breeding currently is really assisted by the fact that for a lot of major disease resistance genes, there are available commercially available molecular markers

that we can use to screen our seedlings and help, speed The breeding process   one challenge or limitation is breeding, it's a numbers game. So you have to grow a lot of plants to get, your ideal, phenotype and genotype. And so when you're dealing with a indoor system, you're only gonna have so much space to work in.

And things like the molecular markers are super helpful . In helping to speed the process and, reduce the number of plants that we need to grow. 

So one of your labs focuses kind of market breeding, I don't know if that's even a word, breeding for market or marketability.

Can you give me some examples of what differentiating factors you're thinking of in your varieties you wanna breed? 

Sure. When you mentioned market, marketability I should mention that the goal is to produce, primarily F1 hybrids.

That would go to seed companies, for them to actually produce and market, that seed. 



The crops, that I'm starting with on my breeding program really fall into three categories, which are squash melons and tomatoes. And so with squash, I have some interesting striping genes and some bicolor features that are really helping the squash to have a really, that striking outward appearance that I mentioned.

Breeding them to have resistance to powdery mildew, which is a major problem here, in greenhouse and high tunnel culture. In melons, my goal is to breed some really flavorful, melons that will be able to thrive in a greenhouse environment. And consumers sometimes get frustrated because they buy melon one week and it tastes really good, and then they go back to the store. Buy another one and that one tastes really watery. Or like cardboard, as some people will say. And so with CEA, because we can really optimize the environment that should be able to produce a fruit that has really predictable quality.

And we're making selections, within the greenhouse environment. So rather than taking something bred for outdoors, we're breeding new ones that are showing. Good performance inside of the greenhouse environment. 

So to our listeners, definitely we can expect some flavorful and delicious varieties tailored to CEA in the coming years.

Eric, pests are definitely something that we need to be worried about in CEA systems because once they are inside the system, I feel like it's hard to manage them. And same is the case with diseases. So what's your program's goal and what are you focusing on currently?

Sure. My focus is integrated pest management, which is a science-based decision support system, which aims to reduce the use of plant protection products to levels that are economically and ecologically sustainable, and also protect human health, and food

quality and that's a network of goals within IPM when the foundation of those is, prevention. 



Followed by detection and then finally control. You could think of it very similar to what a food pyramid is, where things have different weights of importance in terms of a program.

Prevention's always the best medicine, as they say. So prevention's also the most important thing in IPM followed by detection. And finally, if you do have something you can need to control, having to do that and within control you have, biological control options and you have chemical control options, you can think of chemical control as your sugary sweet. At the top of the food pyramid, that's the last thing you want to be eating. 

So yeah, my program, looks at all those areas of integrated pest management and how we can integrate them into, sustainable, growing for our food  

This is so relatable, when it comes to disease management, I like to call it integrated disease