Microgreens: the future of urban agriculture and superfoods Part I

The origins of young edible plants were covered in Microgreens- how did it start? – EVEC Athens. The other end of that story is the case for microgreens in urban agriculture, set out in a 2025 review in Scientia Horticulturae: “Microgreens as the future of urban horticulture and superfoods, supported by post-harvest innovations for shelf-life increase: a review“. This article summarises that review. Where we quote its wording — including the word “superfoods” in its title — we are reporting what the source says, not endorsing the term.

Introduction to the topic

The review’s own abstract describes microgreens as plants that “boast rich bioactive compounds believed to combat chronic diseases”, alongside their intense taste and nutritional value. That phrase deserves to be read slowly, because “believed to” is doing all the work in it. We should be equally careful about how we describe the paper: its full text sits behind a paywall we could not get through, so what follows is based on its title and abstract, which present it as a horticultural review — composition, cultivation, and post-harvest handling for shelf-life. On that basis it is not a source of clinical evidence, and it does not claim to be. Trials in people do exist, and this site reports them: our review of the sulforaphane evidence covers a 40-person study that reported lower IL-6 and CRP after ten weeks of daily broccoli sprouts but had no placebo group, and a randomised, placebo-controlled trial in adults with asthma that found no effect. So the honest position is not that nobody has tested this — it is that the testing done so far is small, early and mixed, and falls well short of showing that eating microgreens treats or prevents any chronic disease. What is well documented is composition: microgreens carry high concentrations of several vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals per gram of fresh weight, with wide variation between species.

The part of the argument that does not depend on health claims is the agronomic one. In the era of global urbanization, microgreens are a strong candidate for functional food production because of their suitability for indoor farming, minimal cultivation resource requirements, and short production cycles.

Let’s talk about global urbanization and these tiny greens

What connects microgreens with urbanization and why are they considered the future? The UN’s World Urbanization Prospects 2025 puts 45% of the world’s 8.2 billion people in cities today, and projects that two-thirds of all global population growth to 2050 will happen in cities. Older sources quote a higher share — the 2018 revision projected 68% of the world urban by 2050 — but that figure rests on each country’s own definition of “urban” rather than the harmonised geospatial method the 2025 revision adopted, so the two sets of numbers are not directly comparable. Either way, more people in cities and more people overall makes food security harder. Alongside it sits “hidden hunger”: diets that supply enough calories but not enough micronutrients. Sustainable vegetable cultivation methods are one part of the response.

And here we come to our young edible plants. 

How can they contribute to positive changes in the area of ​​sustainable food? Indoor farming is a method of growing plants in a controlled environment. It offers benefits such as higher yields and water efficiency compared to traditional outdoor farming, and also reduces the distance food must travel. Another positive aspect of microgreens is that they don’t require a lot of space to grow, making them ideal for urban farming, including rooftops, balconies, and vertical indoor farming. They grow very quickly, ensuring a constant supply of fresh produce. Compared to traditional farming, they consume less water, don’t require pesticides or herbicides, which is in line with the principles of sustainable urban agriculture.

Potential of microgreens

Microgreens have real potential as an urban crop — not because of anything the word “superfood” implies, but because of where and how fast they grow. Growing more of them in urban areas would increase their availability to consumers, putting a fresh, fast, land-free vegetable within reach of people who have no garden and limited access to fresh produce. Whether that measurably changes the health of an urban population is a separate question, and an open one: answering it would take a dietary intervention trial, not a composition table, and we have not found one.

The research on microgreens in urban horticulture is extensive. Part II, A Post-Harvest Guide, focuses on how to improve the quality and extend the freshness of microgreens.

Claims we corrected in this article

Updated 30 July 2026. An earlier version of this page stated in our own voice that “microgreens are known for being rich in bioactive compounds believed to combat chronic diseases”, and that “microgreens have a huge potential as superfoods, ideal for urban gardening”, followed by the claim that growing more of them would provide “numerous nutrients with a positive impact on the health of urban populations”. The first sentence has been attributed to the review that it was paraphrased from, with the hedge that the review itself uses made visible. The word superfood has been removed: it is a marketing term with no scientific or regulatory meaning. The population-health claim has been replaced with what can actually be said — that availability would increase, and that the health effect of that has not been tested.

Corrected again the same day, after review. Three faults introduced by that first correction have been fixed. It claimed we were “not aware of any trial” testing whether microgreens affect chronic disease — which was false, and contradicted our own sulforaphane review, where two such trials are reported; this page now points to them. It described what the source review contains, when we have only been able to read its abstract; that limitation is now stated on the page. And it left standing an unsourced statistic — that 70% of the world would live in urban areas by mid-century — which appears nowhere in the cited review’s abstract. That number has been replaced with figures from the UN’s World Urbanization Prospects 2025, now added to the sources below. See our editorial standards.

Source

• Barańska D, Panek J, Różalska S, Turnau K, Frąc M. Microgreens as the future of urban horticulture and superfoods, supported by post-harvest innovations for shelf-life increase: a review. Scientia Horticulturae 2025;350:114303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2025.114303
• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results. New York: United Nations, 2025. https://population.un.org/wup/