UBC Hydroponic Pod: Campus-Grown Greens in the Dining Hall

Salad grown down the hall. UBC announced on October 5, 2026 that its Food Services team harvests its first crop of lettuce and herbs on October 6 from an indoor growing pod at the Orchard Commons dining hall in Vancouver, then serves it on campus.

What the pod is

• A transparent, portable, modular Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) pod
• Stacked hydroponic trays with precisely tuned LED lighting for year-round growing
• Powered by a standard electrical connection, so it can be installed in almost any building
• Designed by architecture firm Perkins&Will with FORM3; growing system and LEDs by Vancouver agri-tech QuantoTech
• Screens show real-time growth and resource-circularity data to students

A living lab, not just salad

Project lead Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh calls it “a smart, digitally connected food production system.” Researchers will compare pod-grown greens with grocery-store equivalents on nutrition, sensory quality and consumer perception, while Perkins&Will collects data on yield, energy, carbon, cost and space. Executive chef David Speight says more pods could follow if they reduce winter reliance on imported produce.

The pod is expected to move to other locations on and off campus next year. Funding comes from UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab grant, Mitacs, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agricultural Clean Technology program and the BC Centre for Agritech Innovation.

Rocks take

This is the plug-and-grow logic of home hydroponic gardens scaled to a building. The useful output will be the energy and cost data—exactly what decides whether pods belong in schools, hospitals or remote communities.

FAQ

Is the pod for sale? No, it is a research prototype.

What does it grow? Leafy greens and herbs, including lettuce.