OpenHarvest - Research into food growth and optimization<p>There&#x27;s a lot of research being done currently, but it&#x27;s all private research so every new company has to rediscover what somebody has already done. For startups that have great potential in this space, this is a major issue as the it takes a very long time to perform testing of plants(each crop cycle is ~4 weeks) and that burn through their runway easily. Another issue here is that some of the openly available information out there is just for conventional soil farming. There&#x27;s nothing really out there for hydroponics&#x2F;aquaponics. So when you&#x27;re direct seeding new crops in hydroponics&#x2F;aquaponics, you have to completely guess on the density of the seeds and the amount&#x2F;frequency of the watering. There&#x27;s no way to convert recommended seeding directions for soil to hydroponics. There&#x27;s no more rows, access to water isn&#x27;t the same since water is easily available, density affects lighting and lighting affect density. This is a huge problem keeping the hydroponic and aquaponic community moving forward with innovation because it&#x27;s hard to compete with yields when the yields haven&#x27;t been optimized for your new growing medium yet. It&#x27;s also hard to test your new growing apparatus or technology when you&#x27;re struggling to find the most optimal way to grow the plants. Not sure if this is making much sense, kind of rambling right now. If you&#x27;d like more information you can find my email in my profile. I&#x27;ve been working in hydroponics&#x2F;aquaponics my whole career and this is a problem I&#x27;ve seen at every facility.