Great British Railway Journeys steams into Essex labs

Michael Portillo and a BBC film crew steamed onto the University of Essex to explore state-of-the-art labs and meet our world-leading researchers.

The Great British Railway Journeys episode is available on iPlayer now and will air tomorrow Friday, May 2.

Professor Tracy Lawson and Dr Vishwanathan Mohan showcased the high-tech labs and robots developed in our historic Colchester Campus.

Mr Portillo first stopped by in the £3m flagship Smart Technology Experimental Plant Suite (STEPS) facility, which puts researchers on the frontline in the fight against climate change and create crops for “tomorrow’s atmosphere today”. 

It is part of the Essex Plant Innovation Centre brings together research skills, expertise and technologies across our science faculty with the Institute for Analytics and Data Science and Essex Business School to address the challenges facing farmers, technologists and all those in the agricultural and horticultural sectors.

Tour the lab in the gallery below

Professor Lawson, from the School of Life Sciences, led the former Conservative MP around the university’s commercially standard vertical farm and an indoor field that replicates real environments anywhere in the globe.

And explained how Essex is leading developments to feed a warming globe.

“It was exciting to showcase our new Smart Technology Experimental Plant and explain how this facility will help researchers within the Plant Productivity group and EPIC to develop crop plants with greater resilience to changing environmental conditions,” said Professor Lawson.

“It was privilege to highlight how our future climate chambers and vertical farm are facilitating our research is producing plants for tomorrow’s atmosphere today, whilst our outdoor field can mimic the environment in real time.”

The crews then headed into the robot lab within the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering AgriFood lab.

Dr Mohan gave a demonstration of his strawberry picking robot which he is developing in partnership with world-famous jam makers, Wilkin & Sons.

This latest project, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ flagship Farming Innovation Programme, has seen the low-cost robot tasked with picking strawberries in Tiptree.

Find out more about the project in the video below

The robot, which can pick a strawberry in just 2.5 seconds, is based on a previous prototype which has been successfully trialled for the last two seasons.

Dr Mohan said: At the CSEE AgriFood lab, we showed Michael how the power of AI and Robotics can be harnessed to address some of the critical challenges of our times- Labour Security, Food Security, Climate Change, and Sustainability.

“The innovative and adaptive technology can be deployed across crop types -from soft fruits to leafy greens - and growing environments, including traditional, vertical, hydroponic, and substrate-free.

“Importantly, this technology is highly cost-effective with the vision to make cutting edge Agri-robotics accessible to everyone globally.”