News and Publications

Agriculture 5.0 technologies such as alternative proteins, vertical farming, and cellular agriculture, are increasingly presented as solutions for addressing food security and environmental sustainability. The introduction of agri-genomics into these emerging food production techniques offers potential for scalable ways to improve food production efficiency.

To assess the environmental benefits of these innovations, life cycle assessments (LCA) are essential but still underdeveloped. LCA’s capture embodied and operational environmental outcomes, presenting a holistic view of a production process’ impacts. As agri-genomics techniques and tools are applied to emerging agri-food innovations, life cycle techniques afford novel opportunities to discuss their potential tradeoffs with greater transparency and robust data.

This report provides a backgrounder and overview of LCA methodology within mushroom cultivation, cellular agriculture, and vertical farming production systems, highlighting considerations for agri-genomics applications. It also provides recommendations for integrating LCA thinking into accessible decision-support tools to evaluate novel agri-food technologies.

Attrée, E., Newell, R., & Glaros, A. (2025). Intersection of agri-genomics and agriculture 5.0 technologies: Role for life cycle assessment. Transdisciplinary Research on Integrated Approaches to Sustainability (TRIAS) lab. Royal Roads University. http://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.35387.53282