The Process
Gooddrop's ambition is to enable the transformation of cotton production from field to indoor farming, producing a sustainable, profitable crop that can be fully utilised by agriculture, manufacturing and retail.
We have designed, built and fitted out five research units converted from ex-arctic containers to provide test growing units, research and test labs and admin units. Manufactured in East Yorkshire this Gooddrop R&D lab has been installed at the University of Nottingham site in Sutton Bonington.
Working alongside the university's biosciences academic research team over the next three years, we will identify our cotton germplasm, create a longlist of cotton varieties, identify the profiles of cotton suitable for indoor farming, study and determine the cotton propagation strategy and validation traits and plan the breeding and growing programme.
The R&D lab is crucial to Gooddrop's development as it will inform the final design criteria for the scale-up of our planned pilot commercial indoor cotton farm, developed, designed and constructed utilising data from the lab's cotton harvest.
These indoor farms can be built in an existing or in a new building or warehouse, preferably using a box-in-a-box design, where the temperature in the building can be controlled and managed within specific ranges for the different growing stages of cotton. This unique design and construction is easily replicable as it consists of technical parts that are available all over the world, and which are easy to install and maintain.
Our research will establish the various recipes (mixture of light wavelength, temperature, humidity, nutrients) needed at the various stages of the growing cycle to enable us to maximise the quality, yield and return on investment needed to make the project viable.
At the same time we will incorporate in the farm spec' our Gooddrop cotton spinning mill requirements and garment design and manufacture operations.