Exploring Fruiting Crops in Rooftop Agrivoltaics in a Changing World
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The Journal of Living Architecture is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, published by the Green Infrastructure Foundation and hosted by the Living Architecture Monitor Magazine. Learn more about the Journal, read all Journal articles, or find out how to submit to the Journal.
Exploring Fruiting Crops in Rooftop Agrivoltaics in a Changing World
Volume 12 Number 2 Pages 1-11 2025
Eliza Gross¹, Maria Chavez², Jennifer Bousselot¹*
(1) Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States. (2) Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Science Center at Farmington, New Mexico State University, Farmington, NM, United States. *corresponding author: Jennifer.Bousselot@colostate.edu
ABSTRACT
Many challenges caused by climate change, such as degradation of arable land and more volatile weather patterns, are impacting our current agriculture system while the global population becomes increasingly urbanized. A multifaceted urban approach addressing food insecurity and renewable energy generation is necessary to begin combatting these challenges. Rooftop agrivoltaics (RAV), growing crops under solar panels on a green roof, may be one way to increase urban crop production and produce renewable energy in spaces that are commonly underutilized. RAV reduces crop irrigation requirements due to the increased shading. Reciprocally, evapotranspiration from the cropping systems in RAV cool the solar panels and they operate more efficiently. High value horticultural fruiting crops are economically important to urban farmers. Furthermore, there are select fruiting crops that can benefit from partial shading provided by RAV systems. Certain fruiting crops are more sensitive to shade and an RAV system could result in decreased yield and morphological changes that are not optimal. Understanding which of these shade tolerant fruiting crops are most suitable for RAV systems requires further research into this novel growing environment. The ability to produce high yields from fruiting crops in a RAV system may also increase the resiliency of our agricultural system while allowing for the production of renewable energy in the same space.
Key words: food insecurity, climate change, green infrastructure, green roof, solar panels
Read the full article at: https://doi.org/10.46534/jliv.2025.12.02.001
This peer-reviewed article is provided free and open-access.
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