A knitted three-dimensional textile cover developed at North Carolina State University raised strawberry yields by as much as 3.56 times in tunnel field tests, without reducing light access or raising relative humidity beneath the fabric. NC State announced the results on September 29, 2026, alongside publication of the study in the journal Agriculture.

The material, called Plant Armor, is a multilayer porous fabric draped directly over strawberry plants. Its 3-D structure blocks insects from reaching the plants while letting sunlight, rain and airflow pass through. In tests, the cover delivered a consistent warming effect across all three growing seasons, pushing covered plants into the fruiting stage earlier than uncovered controls.

The yield gain defied the researchers' own expectations. "To produce fruit, plants need sunlight," said Gabriel Olawuyi, a graduate research assistant at NC State and lead author of the paper. "We expected that Plant Armor's seemingly opaque fabric would lead to an increase in vegetative biomass at the expense of fruiting — because reduced sunlight would trigger a 'shade-avoidance' response, making the plant divert energy toward stem and leaf growth rather than fruit production. However, we found the fabric did not impede access to light at all, and fruit production increased significantly."

The thermal mechanism is straightforward. "Plants require a certain amount of accumulated heat, calculated as 'growing degree-days,' to progress through developmental stages including fruiting. Our plant cover has proven to enhance these," Olawuyi said. "The plants were in a condition whereby the warmth they need to go through each phenological stage to their production was given to them optimally, and they produced far more than the uncovered plants."

Because the fabric physically excludes insects, Olawuyi said Plant Armor could also cut traditional pesticide applications in strawberry fields — a compliance-relevant claim for growers facing tightening agrochemical restrictions, though the announced results cover yield, humidity and light metrics rather than quantified pesticide reduction.

The commercialization path is concrete. NC State patented the Plant Armor Gen 2 fabric studied in the paper — US Patent No. 11,582,968 B2, granted February 21, 2023 — and the university has licensed the technology for commercial development. That positions the product for transfer from academic trials to volume manufacturing, a step the field-test data alone does not yet confirm.

The origin story is a reminder that industrial textile R&D often produces unplanned second markets. Plant Armor emerged from a program to make military uniforms resistant to mosquito bites and more comfortable under body armor. "The path to Plant Armor started with trying to make a cloth to go on a soldier's chest to make body armor more comfortable," said co-author R. Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor at NC State. "Then, through trial and error, we arrive at a product which could triple the output of strawberry farms here in North Carolina."

The published paper, "Knitted 3-D, Porous Textile Cover to Enhance Strawberry Fruit Production and Prevent Insect Feeding," lists co-authors James Clothier, Matthew Bertone, Grayson Cave, Reuben Garshong, Andre West, Loganathan Ponnusamy and Clyde Sorenson, all of NC State. Funding came from the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation (grant AG00463770) and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture's Research Capacity Fund (HATCH award no. 02853). The project combined the NC State College of Natural Resources, the Wilson College of Textiles and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

With the patent secured, a licensee in place and three seasons of field data behind it, Plant Armor now faces the test that matters commercially: scaling production of the fabric and validating performance in open-field conditions beyond North Carolina tunnels.