Soilless indoor smart agriculture as an emerging enabler technology for food and nutrition security amidst climate change

Abstract Globally there are three major challenges in the 21st century, related to the conventional agriculture-based food production system. They are very suitably defined under the United Nations sustainable development goals. These three challenges are food security, nutrition security, and climate security. With ever-increasing global population, decreasing arable land area, soil erosion, and scarcity of freshwater availability, these challenges aggravate ecological homeostasis. Such interconnected challenges are of paramount importance and can be overcome by some extent through climate-smart agriculture practices such as the use of renewable energy sources to drive agriculture, crop diversification, crop rotation, and organic agriculture. However, the need of the hour is to leapfrog toward climate-resilient cultivation practices. Deployment of soilless indoor cultivation technology is one such long-term sustainable strategy. Adoption of soilless technology provides a great opportunity to produce more with less cultivation area, more crop per drop of water, reduction of the toxic chemical load, and improving the ecological footprint. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the impact of climate change on food security and nutrition security and how soilless cultivation technology can bring a paradigm shift to close the gap between food and nutrition security.