The UK market for fresh mushrooms is worth £450 million annually but picking has had to be done by hand to prevent damage. Lincoln-based Agaricus Robotics is developing a mushroom-harvesting robot that can pick whole crops without bruising and will lead to 20–30% yield increases from optimised harvesting. The company arises from Ceres Agri-Tech – a partnership led by Cambridge Enterprise (the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge) between five UK universities and three agricultural research institutes – and is a spinout from the University of Lincoln.
Added 10 November 2022