Hydroponics – An Israeli Company Puts the Lettuce on Top
February 27th, 2010 |
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This article was written by Jessica Steinberg and retrieved from www.israel21c.org.
Growponics created a series of growing machines for different kinds of produce. Lots of people are eating lettuce these days. In fact, the leafy stuff is a $20 billion business in the U.S. and an $18 billion business in Europe.
The problem, however, is growing lettuce that can remain fresh without traces of chemicals, soil or bugs, and then keeping the supply fresh during shipping. One Israeli company has figured out a way, growing lettuce hydroponically – that is – cultivating produce without soil.
“Lettuce has become like bread,” says Lior Hessel, CEO and a co-founder of Growponics, which is based in the northern town of Yokneam. “It has to be on the supermarket shelves 12 months a year.”
According to figures gathered by Growponics, the rise in demand for lettuce – particularly the popular pre-washed and packaged bags of greens – has become difficult to meet. Lettuce can be grown only in sunny regions where the temperature doesn’t fall below zero. For the U.S., those conditions are limited to California’s Salinas Valley and Mexico, while sunny Spain has become the main supplier for Europe.
But because of their relatively short shelf life, heads of lettuce have to be shipped quickly so that they remain crisp and fresh. Given the distances between the West and East coasts in the U.S., or between northern and central Europe, fresh lettuce is generally transported in refrigerated trucks, an expensive proposition that hikes up prices on the already pricey item.
“Lettuce in Boston that comes from Salinas rises by at least 30 cents,” Hessel told ISRAEL21c. “It’s the same in Europe. Lettuce is a lot more expensive in Finland when it’s coming all the way from Spain.”
A robotics engineer by trade, Hessel and his brother, Ohad, began thinking about solutions for lettuce cultivation as they were working on the application of robotics to agronomy. Using the more classic definition of hydroponics, cultivating produce using water (instead of soil), they worked to find a solution that would involve water, less energy and fewer square meters of space.
The Hessels created indoor fields of crops, developed mechanized fields of Styrofoam beds of lettuce plugs that are rotated over recirculated, nutrient-filled water for a period of four to five weeks. The crop beds, which are 35 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, are housed in an environmentally controlled, 40-foot container that uses artificial light, or a greenhouse that uses natural sunlight.
Because all growth takes place indoors, the lettuce greens can be grown 12 months a year. Planting, harvesting and packaging are performed by intelligent robots, monitored by a computerized control center.
“We basically supply the conditions of springtime, not summer, not winter, for 12 months a year,” explains Hessel.
Growponics offers the best solution for growers in cold climates where land and labor are relatively expensive. Other versions of Growponics technology was designed for climates with more available land and sunlight, using a more traditional greenhouse structure to take advantage of the natural light from the outdoors.
Growponics is the future of agriculture, welcome to the future.