Bowery’s experience with ActivatedAir™

For the first Seed Matters blog of 2025, Zayndu’s head of customer success, Ollie Green, sat down with Rodrigo Pereyra, the VP of AgScience at Bowery, to discuss the vertical farming industry and his experience using ActivatedAir™. Over the past decade, vertical farming has significantly advanced technology adoption in CEA. Until recently, Bowery led this…

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Bowery's Rodrigo Pereyra talks about ActivatedAir

For the first Seed Matters blog of 2025, Zayndu’s head of customer success, Ollie Green, sat down with Rodrigo Pereyra, the VP of AgScience at Bowery, to discuss the vertical farming industry and his experience using ActivatedAir™.

Over the past decade, vertical farming has significantly advanced technology adoption in CEA. Until recently, Bowery led this modern agricultural revolution, with Rodrigo Pereyra leading its research and development efforts.

Zayndu began working with Rodrigo’s team on ActivatedAir™ seed priming in 2023, and together, we have learned an enormous amount about ActivatedAir™’s value in a large, sophisticated CEA operation.

Reflecting on the Bowery experience and what CEA growers can learn for the future.

“There probably is a limit to the size of the system that is manageable to give you practical output and consistent crop production.

“My thoughts now turn to how you make an operation more resilient, so you aren’t absorbing so much risk by having really big systems that are practical when everything is working well. However, when you have a problem, they are difficult to manage,” explains Rodrigo.

He believes growing media will be incredibly important in the future. Peat restrictions are coming, and at the same time, its current use potentially introduces a host of plant pathogens into systems.

“So, how do you manage your inputs to reduce future risk and improve consistency? We want to know that every crop is consistent regardless of the seed lot or variations the growing media has introduced if you use organic-based material.”

Testing new technology

Part of Rodrigo’s role at Bowery was to examine innovative technologies that have the potential to improve their production system.

“Coming into Bowery, I had the notion of tech being an enabler for vertical farming and that there was a lot of power in technology to grow crops. If anything, my perspective shifted during my time there.

“Ultimately, what you are solving is an agricultural problem; tech can complement that. It can give you visibility, automation and efficiencies that you might not get otherwise, but, fundamentally, what you need to give plants is water, nutrients, air and light.”

There is a danger of overemphasising non-agricultural tech to solve agricultural problems. However, Rodrigo believes there is a balance to strike, and the latest technology offers considerable advances in growing.

ActivatedAir™ at Bowery

“… Technology like Zayndu’s is exciting because it addresses an agricultural input issue,” says Rodrigo.

Bowery’s initial focus for ActivatedAir™ was investigating its ability to remove pathogens from spinach seeds.

“When we first started speaking with Zayndu, what stuck with me was the level of engagement of the team. They really made a point of continually communicating with us to find a solution and move things forward.”

They expanded the scope of their work with ActivatedAir™ to include different crop types, conducting a full screen across most of Bowery’s important crops. “One of the things that came out of this that was really interesting as we were looking at seed cleaning was the impact on yield,” adds Rodrigo.

When Bowery first examined ActivatedAir™’s pathogen removal capabilities, they discovered that the treatment enhanced overall crop performance.

“On one main variety, we saw a 15% increase in germination, which led to a significant impact on yield,” explains Rodrigo.

Inconsistent seed germination is an issue they encountered that led to inefficiencies. Some seed batches germinated well, whereas others could have been better.

With many growing costs fixed, reduced yields from inconsistent seed germination impacts profitability, says Rodrigo. However, if every batch performs similarly, growers can achieve consistent outcomes.

From a grower’s perspective, Rodrigo sees an opportunity for ActivatedAir™ to help solve this problem and deliver value for the grower.

Germination consistency is at the forefront of every conversation with growers using ActivatedAir™.

Zayndu has done much more work on this after the result Bowery found, and we are finding that ActivatedAir™ enhances seed germination consistency. The plant science team are developing treatment protocols to focus on this.

Despite the apparent commercial challenges in the vertical farming sector, it is evident that it still has much to offer CEA. Evaluating and adopting new technologies, along with expertise in these areas, is crucial for sustained profitability.

At the time of the interview, Rodrigo Pereyra was exploring new opportunities in his field of expertise. Please connect with him on LinkedIn if you’d like to reach out.

Zayndu

By Ollie Green, Head of Customer Success at Zayndu