Unveiling the Productivity Potential of Vertical Farming Through Diverse Crop Cultivation: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

While vertical farming may offer high productivity per unit land area and has received increasing attention for urban food production, research has primarily focused on leafy greens and herbs. Although recent studies have also introduced fruiting vegetables and cereal crops, comparative evaluations under standardized environmental conditions remain limited because crop morphology, duration, harvestable organs, and biomass allocation differ substantially among crop types. This study, conducted in AlmaVFarm, the experimental vertical farm of the University of Bologna, evaluated the productivity and resource use efficiency of five representative crops grown under identical environmental conditions. Crops included dwarf corn as a staple crop, dwarf tomato as a fruit crop, basil as an herb, and lettuce and arugula as leafy greens. To enable meaningful cross-crop evaluations, performance was assessed using normalized indicators of land-surface, cultivation volume, light, energy, and cost use efficiencies. Lettuce achieved the highest annual marketable yield (73.2 kg FW m−2 y−1), producing 46% more than arugula and 35% more than basil. It also exhibited the greatest land-surface use efficiency (65 kg m−2 y−1), volume use efficiency (24.5 kg m−3 y−1), and energy use efficiency (46.7 g FW kWh−1), corresponding to 3.5-fold and 58-fold higher energy efficiency than tomato and corn, respectively, and up to 1.8-fold higher than arugula and basil. The normalized resource use efficiency framework enabled robust comparisons among contrasting crop categories despite their distinct biological characteristics, revealing substantial differences in adaptation to indoor cultivation. These findings provide a quantitative basis for crop selection and diversification strategies in vertical farming while highlighting the need for crop-specific optimization to improve the resource use efficiency and commercial viability of fruit and staple crops in CEA.