Smart garden developer scores $194,197 grant

Anu™, a health and wellness brand that develops controlled environment farming systems, has received a $194,197 grant through the National Science Foundation’s Technology Enhancement for Commercial Partnerships (TECP) program.

Purdue University alumni Scott Massey and Ivan Ball founded anu, which received funding from Purdue Innovates. They are currently led by their partners Sven Nelson, Ball and Massey.

They market fully automated, home and commercial smart gardens that grow daily portions of produce with compostable and aeroponic seeds. Aeroponics is a form of hydroponics, the technique of growing plants without soil.

CEO Massey said the grant marks a significant milestone in Anu’s journey to redefine home gardening and localized production.

“This TECP funding from the NSF will help us in the final push to commercialization,” he said. “It will support the development for high-production manufacturing of 100% compostable pods.”

The additional funding opportunity is for NSF Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II grant awardees. The NSF awarded a Phase II SBIR grant for $970,993 in 2023.

Simplifying aeroponics, addressing energy problems
Massey said their technology is based on aeroponics, a soilless growing method developed by NASA. It grows food three times faster and uses 90% less water than traditional gardening, and allows monthly harvests throughout the year without pesticides or preservatives.

Massey said the technology will also allow users to grow fresh produce near or at the point of consumption.

“This eliminates the need for supply chains for perishable products that are prone to losses of up to 40% from the field to the final consumer,” he said. “These losses exacerbate an already stressed environment that must overproduce to account for supply chain losses.”

Massey said their innovations will simplify traditional aeroponic cultivation, which requires skilled labor and expensive equipment to manage nutrients and pH levels. He draws a parallel between the company’s seedpods and Keurig’s single-serve coffee makers.

“Keurig has transformed coffee brewing from a time-consuming task into a quick and convenient process,” he said. “Similarly, our composite seedpods simplify domestic and commercial cultivation by packaging seeds, growth media and nutrients in a single consumable that can be composted or replanted in the ground. This eliminates the complexity and skilled labor associated with traditional systems, which addresses the biggest obstacles to widespread adoption.”

Massey said innovations have also addressed criticism of high power consumption leveled against the traditional agriculture-controlled industry.

“Our patented Rotary Aeroponics® system, quietly refined over the past few years, significantly increases energy efficiency in terms of grams of produce per kilowatt-hour,” he said. “The system is inspired by the biomimicry of trees and optimizes light exposure. It reduces the total number of LEDs needed to illuminate the aeroponic tower that expands the canopy of the outdoor plant, demonstrating our commitment to reduce the consumption of “energy while improving performance”.

Expanding production options
Massey said they are expanding their Pure Produce® offering into flowering and fruiting plants such as peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. He said these plants have a longer growth cycle and more specific lighting requirements, making them much more difficult to grow than leafy green products because of the energy demands.

“Traditional non-rotary systems struggle with thermodynamic heat management from lights, leading to high costs or unwanted heating indoors, making it impossible to grow profitable fruit varieties beyond less green leafy varieties intense, like lettuce, kale, etc.,” he said. . “Anu’s remarkably efficient system operates at about $5 per month in power for daily servings of produce, a small fraction of the energy costs of other systems, with the potential to be even more efficient in the near future.”

They received a $75,000 investment from the Ag-Celerator Fund, co-founded by the Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue’s College of Agriculture. He received Phase I and Phase II SBIR grants from the National Science Foundation and matching funds from Elevate Ventures, as well as a $200,000 Indiana Manufacturing Readiness Grants award.

Massey was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Manufacturing and Industry category. They received the AgriNovus Indiana HungerTech Challenge Award at the 25th annual TechPoint Mira Awards, recognizing their work in market-driven technologies that increase food distribution and security. TechPoint, a Central Indiana Corporate Partnership initiative, supports Indiana’s digital innovation economy and technology ecosystem.

“Indiana’s long-standing industry expertise in devices and advanced polymer materials for consumer products has been instrumental in their early success, leading to a deep and lasting impact towards sustainability and food sovereignty ” said Massey.

Source: purdue.edu