- Oishii says deep horticultural expertise is still lacking in vertical farming.
- New R&D hub launched to accelerate research in plant biology
- New centre follows the first close of Oishii’s $150 million Series C in May 2026.
After more than a decade of experience in indoor agriculture, the company believes many of the toughest problems stem from an incomplete understanding of how crops behave throughout their lifecycle.
“The vertical farming sector is still developing the deep, long-term horticultural expertise needed to fully understand how crops behave across their entire lifecycle in controlled environments,” said John Reed, Chief of Strategy for Oishii.
Strawberries, the company’s specialty, are especially challenging because of their multi-year lifecycle and nutritional, environmental and developmental needs, which can vary “dramatically” at each stage, Reed said.
While robotic systems, sensors and climate-control equipment can be purchased and replicated, a decade’s worth of crop-specific knowledge is far harder to acquire.
Reed highlighted that developing this understanding is not something that can be achieved quickly. Instead, it requires years of experimentation and data collection.
Moving forward, he believes the industry’s next phase of growth will depend on developing a deeper understanding of plant biology.
“Ultimately, we believe the sector needs deeper longitudinal horticultural expertise — an understanding not just of how to grow a plant, but how to optimise its biology over years and across every stage of its lifecycle.”
Accelerated learning
On this front, indoor agriculture has an advantage in accelerating research because of its tightly controlled conditions.
“At Oishii, we’ve spent more than a decade studying these dynamics, and our indoor growing environment gives us a unique ability to accelerate that learning. We can conduct research year-round, with multiple experimental crop cycles beginning every month. This enables us to continuously test hypotheses, generate data and build expertise far faster than is possible with seasonal outdoor growing,” Reed said.
According to Reed, the company’s new R&D hub builds on this approach, helping researchers conduct more experiments and gain a more detailed understanding of how environmental conditions affect fruit quality.
The new Open Innovation Center was unveiled on August 5 in Hamura, Tokyo.
Its work will span scalable farming systems, productivity, sustainability, flavour, quality and cultivation technologies for new varieties of fruit and vegetables.
The company said the centre will be a dedicated place to build on nearly a decade of research and operating experience with its pesticide-free, non-GMO, vertically farmed produce.
It currently runs hundreds of experiments each year to examine how different growing conditions influence plant biology and fruit quality and expects its R&D centre to accelerate that work.
While Oishii is now synonymous with ultra-premium strawberries, Reed said the company believes there is still room for improvement.
“We take great pride in growing exceptional-quality strawberries completely pesticide-free, but we believe we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.”
The company’s immediate research priority is understanding how precise environmental controls can further improve flavour and sensory characteristics.
With the new R&D centre, the company also has the opportunity to explore breeding varieties specifically optimised for its growing system.
“Rather than adapting our technology to whatever varieties are available, we can increasingly develop plants with the traits our system values most—higher yield, better quality, greater consistency, and fruit that is easier for robots to harvest,” said Reed.
The new hub builds on Oishii’s expanding investment across the US and Japan to accelerate research and development across vertical farming and crop cultivation.
The opening follows the first close of Oishii’s $150 million Series C in May 2026.