Barrier Point Road, Pontoon Dock DLR, Silvertown, London, E16

Cold drizzle is falling over Silvertown and the grey morning light filters through the windows of the London Development Agency’s Research Institute of Plant Industry, situated downstream from the traditional docklands of London in the area of Silvertown Quays, now dominated by the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery.

In one of the rooms, a man in a white coat sits at a table with a grey paper bag, and its contents, seeds, spill out over the table in front of him. He does not look up from sorting through the seeds as two visitors pass, and, with his lips moving silently, he appears to be lost in thought…

The London Development Agency has just granted permission for an urban agricultural scheme that provides London with ecologically benign sources of fuel. With the support of agricultural technology provided by an international agribiotech giant, the Research Institute of Plant Industry has developed a crop that breaks down its own cellulose in order to help ethanol fermentation.

Stretching along most of Silvertown’s 24ha, the dark leaved plants can now be found clinging to the roadsides and under the elevated motorways near Barrier Point Road. A bioengineered marvel.

Excerpt from Plant Fiction by Troika. Now showing at the Science Museum, London.