The Future of Responsive Farming: inside the ACDC Project with Fotenix
- Fotenix Team
- Oct 25
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 4
At a glance
For controlled systems, balancing production and energy use is a challenge. Fotenix was one of several tech partners that participated in the UK Agri-Tech Centres ACDC project, helping to develop a responsive, scalable indoor farming system.
Fotenix is no stranger to working with the UK Agi-Tech Centre; we’re currently a partner on the excellently named SLIMERS project.
And over the last two years, we’ve been working behind the scenes on another: Advanced Crop Dynamic Control for Sustainable Production in Vertical Farms (ACDC). Funded by Innovate UK and BBSRC, Fotenix was among a consortium of agri-tech innovators helping to build more efficient growing systems that can respond to plants’ needs in real time.
Why Fotenix?
Fotenix non-destructive, multispectral scans provide insight into crop metabolites, water content, and visual indicators of health. These give researchers and growers a clearer picture of plant performance, disease status, and even nutritional values.
Our system was integrated with Ostara’s control platform, a flexible system that connects and automates lighting, irrigation, sensors, and climate controls, giving growers the freedom to choose the best tools for their setup.
Vertically Urban, a UK-based horticultural LED manufacturer, supplied the tunable HortiBlades that underpin the system’s energy savings, offering precise, dynamic control over light colour, spectrum, and intensity.
Trials began at the UK Agri-Tech Centre to establish baseline lighting recipes for yield and energy efficiency. Rothamsted Research analysed spinach metabolite profiles, confirming that spectral conditions affect not only growth but also leaf colour, shape, and taste. LettUs Grow then hosted a 30 m² closed-loop trial using ultrasonic aeroponics.
What we did:
Fotenix imaging data was used to determine how plants were responding to their environment in real-time. This information was then fed into Ostara’s control platform, which automatically adjusted Vertically Urban’s tunable LEDs to give crops the exact spectrum and intensity they needed. The system effectively created a real-time feedback loop for crop needs and growing conditions, automatically optimising the environment.
The impact
The platform fine-tunes conditions to plant needs throughout the growing cycle, reducing energy use while protecting quality. These insights demonstrate that the system can provide indoor growers with the ability to prioritise yield, cost, or taste of their produce.
What’s next?
The next step is to take the ACDC system out of the lab and into commercial production. The project partners are exploring how it can connect with renewable energy sources and adapt to different crop types and growing setups, from vertical farms to glasshouses.
