A new 3D knitted textile developed by researchers at North Carolina State University has been shown to more than triple strawberry yields in tunnel field trials, while also offering the potential to reduce pesticide and water use.
Known as Plant Armor, the textile is draped over strawberry plants to create a physical barrier against insects. Its three-dimensional porous structure prevents pests from reaching the plants while allowing sunlight, rain and airflow to pass through.
Field trials found that strawberry plants protected by Plant Armor produced up to 3.56 times more harvestable fruit than uncovered plants. Researchers also found no negative impact on relative humidity, light availability or vegetative plant biomass.
The results are significant because researchers had initially expected the apparently opaque textile to reduce the amount of light reaching the plants, potentially encouraging leaf and stem growth at the expense of fruit production.
“We expected that Plant Armor’s seemingly opaque fabric would lead to an increase in vegetative biomass at the expense of fruiting,” said Gabriel Olawuyi, graduate research assistant at NC State and lead author of the research paper.
“However, we found the fabric did not impede access to light at all, and fruit production increased significantly.”
The knitted cover also provided a consistent warming effect during the strawberry growing seasons. According to the researchers, this helped plants accumulate the heat required to progress through their developmental stages and reach fruiting earlier than uncovered plants.
In laboratory bioassays, the porous textile also demonstrated complete exclusion of aphids. This physical protection could potentially reduce growers’ dependence on conventional pesticides while still allowing air and water to reach crops.
Plant Armor emerged from earlier NC State research aimed at developing textile structures for military applications. Researchers had originally been working on fabrics designed to make body armour more comfortable and protect military personnel against mosquito bites.
“The path to Plant Armor started with trying to make a cloth to go on a soldier’s chest to make body armour more comfortable,” said R. Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor at NC State and co-author of the study.
“Then, through trial and error, we arrive at a product which could triple the output of strawberry farms here in North Carolina.”
The latest research follows previous work in which a 3D spacer fabric used as a crop cover increased cabbage vegetative growth by 2.93 times while resisting insect penetration.
Researchers say further on-farm testing is now required to determine how the technology performs with different crops and under varying geographical and climatic conditions.
The study, Knitted 3-D, Porous Textile Cover to Enhance Strawberry Fruit Production and Prevent Insect Feeding, was published in the journal Agriculture on 24 September 2026.
The Plant Armor Gen 2 textile used in the research is patented by NC State University and licensed for commercial development. The project brought together researchers from NC State’s Wilson College of Textiles, College of Natural Resources and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.