'Smart Soil' Grows 138% Bigger Crops Using 40% Less Water (newatlas.com) 69
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a "smart soil" that can keep plants better hydrated and provide a controlled release of nutrients. As reported by New Atlas, tests found that it "drastically improved crop growth while using far less water." From the report: The soil gets its "smart" moniker thanks to the addition of a specially formulated hydrogel, which works to absorb more water vapor from the air overnight, then releasing it to the plants' roots during the day. Incorporating calcium chloride into the hydrogel also provides a slow release of this vital nutrient. The team tested the new smart soil in lab experiments, growing plants in 10 grams of soil, with some including 0.1 g of hydrogel. A day/night cycle was simulated, with 12 hours of darkness at 25 C (77 F) and either 60% or 90% relative humidity, followed by 12 hours of simulated sunlight at 35 C (95 F) and 30% humidity.
Sure enough, plants growing in the hydrogel soil showed a 138% boost to their stem length, compared to the control group. Importantly, the hydrogel-grown plants achieved this even while requiring 40% less direct watering. In future work, the team plans to try incorporating other types of fertilizers, and conducting longer field experiments. The research was published in the journal ACS Materials Letters.
Sure enough, plants growing in the hydrogel soil showed a 138% boost to their stem length, compared to the control group. Importantly, the hydrogel-grown plants achieved this even while requiring 40% less direct watering. In future work, the team plans to try incorporating other types of fertilizers, and conducting longer field experiments. The research was published in the journal ACS Materials Letters.
AI soil ! (Score:3)
Re: AI soil ! (Score:1)
They forgot to mention that smart soil composition was calculated by AI
Re:AI soil ! (Score:4, Informative)
You jest, but machine vision and autopilot is the single most important upcoming advance in ag. Essentially instead of doing things like watering, fertilizing and killing weeds one field at a time while trying to minimize overlap and gaps in cover, machine vision is trained to recognize exact location where it has been and where it hasn't been and then look at each plant and understand its exact needs. And then do exactly what it needs. Fertilize when it needs fertilizer with just the right amount. Spray weed killer only on weeds. Spray insecticide only on plants with insects. Water only those that have insufficient water.
It's promising savings on the level of 75% reduction in things like fertilizer and herbicide/pesticide needs. And no more need for a driver, which in ag world is big savings as well, because being able to drive at constant speeds and in constant direction with turns taken at exactly correct points is extremely challenging and requires years to decades of experience to do just right. And every time you miss, you either double spray something, don't spray something, spread coverage too thin, or spray too thick.
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even you could do it
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Even latest military GPS has insufficient accuracy for this sort of work. Ag uses StarFire satnav.
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A lot of these are vastly inefficient compared to modern methods. And mainly used for reasons of either insufficient resources to use modern methods, or in case of UK utterly retarded politicians banning some aspects of modern ag methods because of Green religion worshipping primeval nature.
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Less water? (Score:3)
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Oh would you please stop resisting progress which will save the planet?
Prove you have zero kids before lambasting anyone about saving the planet.
For the record, the planet is going to be fine. Humanity won't. Neither will all the species and biodiversity we take down with us.
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If you are in an environment where water is an issue, any farm that is able to absorb more water from the air will presumably impact other residents
Sure, if they're in California then maybe they'll use less water for irrigation and leave more for their neighbours.
Now, as for the immediate environmental impacts it sounds like more fresh water will stay in the local ecosystem instead of evaporating away, getting blown downwind, and eventually, into the ocean. In general, I suspect this is a good thing as most ecosystems do well with a bit more moisture. I doubt the overall climatic effects would be much, though I might be concerned about this new stuff t
Reinvented bentonite soil improvement? (Score:2)
I doubt this does anything different than bentonite clay.
Re: Reinvented bentonite soil improvement? (Score:2)
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There was even a dude pushing a similar product on Shark Tank for people planting new small trees so they wouldn't run out of water and require as much maintenance right after being planted.
Reinvented lint enriched soil (Score:3)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/life... [msn.com]
Ages ago - 1990s (?) - read that one major clothing manufacturer would pre-wash their jeans, keep the lint and sell it to farmers so that they could mix it into the soil as a moisture retention helper
Now for the important considerations. (Score:5, Insightful)
1 - Cost.
2 - Longevity
3 - Breakdown components
4 - Interaction with insects and invertebrates in the soil.
Re:Now for the important considerations. (Score:4, Insightful)
More sustainable agriculture tends to be centred around making the soil better at retaining water & aerating plant roots better & one of the better ways to do this is increasing the percentage of organic matter in the soil, i.e. better soil quality. That also tends to lead to higher crop yields. Many of the experimental methods using such strategies also tend to be organic, e.g. world records for crop yields per hectare have been broken using these techniques (rice & potatoes).
Today's intensive farming methods tend to do the opposite & don't necessarily lead to higher yields. Many comparison studies are between depleted (i.e. poor quality) soil with & without fertiliser rather than comparisons with methods that cultivate better soil quality. The major agricultural research centres have long been taken over by Big Ag so more objective research is hard to come by.
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All organic agriculture has fossil fertilizer inputs, they just cycle it through some other crops/animals first. Third world SRI rice farmers won't care if the compost they use is from organic or non organic animals/crops. SRI still uses fossil fertilizer too BTW.
Digestate, importing feed from more corrupt countries, cycling fields from organic to non organic etc. Lots of ways to restore the nutrient balance with fossil inputs by proxy in more strictly policed organic agriculture, until they put fusion reac
Re: Now for the important considerations. (Score:3)
It's avoidable.
I'm not a farmer, just interested in vegetable gardening without fossil/synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. One of the presentations I attended for more information, mentioned that the same techniques had been applied at farms (three had been mentioned, two are well known brands where I live, big suppliers to supermarkets).
The technique boils down to enriching the soil's microbiology with beneficial species, according to some lab analysis. In broad terms, some fungal species live in symbio
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Regenerative farms use supplemental feed, the indirect fossil fertilizer is always there ...
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In the research centres where they conduct the studies & break the world records for crop yields, the conditions are carefully controlled, so no, you can't wave your magic FUD wand & wish it all away.
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Organic feed companies here in Europe got into trouble when the Ukraine supply of "organic" crops dropped out, I have my doubts.
As for regenerative farming and research centres, LOL. SRI is supported by academia, but that just uses less fossil fertilizer (and a ton of manual labour), they aren't interested in enshrining grazing as a magical soil enhancer.
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OP talked about record crop yields for rice, those were set by SRI. A system supported for instance by Cornell, who in their FAQ says :
"Organic matter as base fertilization, complemented if needed with chemical fertilizer"
Here's some honest science about phosphorus in organic agriculture, equally valid for potassium.
https://relacs-project.eu/wp-c... [relacs-project.eu]
"On many organic farms, especially those without livestock,
phosphorus (P) exports through the sale of produce is
greater than P imports through fertilisers and pu
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The problem is when it turns into a disingenuous battleground to promote animal agriculture to the point it becomes magical thinking. Pasture is less intensive than cropping and with a little fossil fertilizer allows you to build up soil organic content, that is the whole truth of regenerative agriculture. You could accomplish the same thing with green manuring.
For range grazing the spiel is especially atrocious. Everyone and everything is to blame for range degradation except grazing. Muh ancient pastorial
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Improving soil quality tends to give better crop yields that fossil fuels intensive farming methods. That's all I'm saying.
Adding hydro-gels more than likely does little to contribute to that.
Most important consideration: nutritional (Score:2)
MBA Logic (Score:2)
5 years from now, after capturing 90% of the market, Joe's Real Good Hydrogel, rebrands as "MicroGel", releases AI Soil (apologies to previous poster), increases subscription fee by double, changes TOS to limit use of the Gel, then claims ownership of all un mined bentonite, because no one said they couldn't. (turns out hydrogel was processed
Smart crops (Score:4, Funny)
Does it mean the crops only grow with a subscription, must be connected to the internet, the farmers must agree to any new outrageous change of the terms of service to be allowed to harvest and they're put under 24 hour surveillance by the plants?
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I can't tell if you're joking or foreshadowing.
Re: Smart crops (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, and when the fields are being prepared the system will go down causing everyone to miss the season. When the system comes back up, once in a while you get reports and pictures of some other farm and not yours.
What kind of Hydrogel (Score:2)
From wikipedia:
Hydrogels are prepared using a variety of polymeric materials, which can be divided broadly into two categories according to their origin: natural or synthetic polymers. Natural polymers for hydrogel preparation include hyaluronic acid, chitosan, heparin, alginate, gelatin and fibrin.[18] Common synthetic polymers include polyvinyl alcohol, polyethylene glycol, sodium polyacrylate, acrylate polymers and copolymers thereof.[6] Whereas natural hydrogels are usually non-toxic, and often provides other advantages for medical use, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, antibiotic/antifungal effect and improve regeneration of nearby tissue, their stability and strength is usually much lower than synthetic hydrogels.[19]
So it looks like the natural ones break down quickly, and the synthetic ones are essentially plastics. So new improved soil, now with more microplastics?
Re:What kind of Hydrogel (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but what kind of Hydrogel? From wikipedia:
Hydrogels are prepared using a variety of polymeric materials, which can be divided broadly into two categories according to their origin: natural or synthetic polymers. Natural polymers for hydrogel preparation include hyaluronic acid, chitosan, heparin, alginate, gelatin and fibrin.[18] Common synthetic polymers include polyvinyl alcohol, polyethylene glycol, sodium polyacrylate, acrylate polymers and copolymers thereof.[6] Whereas natural hydrogels are usually non-toxic, and often provides other advantages for medical use, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, antibiotic/antifungal effect and improve regeneration of nearby tissue, their stability and strength is usually much lower than synthetic hydrogels.[19]
p>So it looks like the natural ones break down quickly, and the synthetic ones are essentially plastics. So new improved soil, now with more microplastics?
I think they are doing something like this https://www.cnet.com/home/kitc... [cnet.com]
So looks more like the spheres that break down quickly, since the process I linked also uses Calcium Chloride. So yeah, it is interesting. But if used more than a couple times, there's going to be quite the salt load added to the ground.
Re: What kind of Hydrogel (Score:2)
Yeah...road salt is not my go-to when I need to make my garden grow better....
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You're looking at the hydrogel wiki, there's also another "hydrogel agriculture" page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (notable, this new "smart soil" research hasn't been added).
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Fusing hydroponics with materials science? (Score:2)
nah, use Gatorade (Score:1)
Re: nah, use Gatorade (Score:2)
That's brawndo! What are you, tarded?
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That's brawndo! What are you, tarded?
No, he's right, Brawndo has a very different formulation than Gatorade. Gatorade worked just fine. Its only when Brawndo replaced Gatorade did the crops begin to suffer.
If you need to grow potatoes in a mars habitat ... (Score:2)
this doesn't sound practical at all ... just more junk science so scientists can publish instead of perish
all the 'science' like this will never amount to anything of course, just typical academic corruption in action
Except for growing food aboard a long endurance spacecraft, a space station, a moon base, a mars base, etc.
Article not open? IDGAF (Score:5, Informative)
The typically garbage news article doesn't give a useful amount of information on what the hydrogel is made from. It tells us about only one ingredient. The abstract tells us about the same ingredient, so that's worthless as well. I could take the time to track down the author[s] and ask for a copy of the paper, but if the submission were worth posting, someone would have done that already.
If the paper isn't in an open journal where I can just read it, and the article is of this typically poor quality, then the article is worthless and the submission is worthless.
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If the paper isn't in an open journal where I can just read it, and the article is of this typically poor quality, then the article is worthless and the submission is worthless.
we'll be sure to let somebody know
Re: Article not open? IDGAF (Score:3, Informative)
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Yes, thank you. That seems exactly the stuff. I hope someone mods you up.
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It didn't take me but a few clicks and scrolls from the link provided to find out the aerogel is NIPAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That's made from nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. There's so much else in the world to grouch on, but this story is actually good news and interesting, not at all worthless.
Why 12/12?? (Score:2)
Unless they are making this to grow weed, most outdoor vegetables do not grow in 12/12. 12/12 is the light cycle at equinox. Thats march 22 and September 22. Summer light cycles are closer to 16-18 hrs depending on how close you are to the next time zone meridian. Why arent they testing this in an 18/6 where there is only half as much time for this gel to absorb humidity? To me it seems like this is a way of polishing a turd where real world application experiments did not do well; so lets change the test t
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grew weed once, thinks he knows something about plants
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I know something about daylight cycles and how long the fucking sun is out during the day at various times of the year. Unlike you, who spends all day masturbating in his mom‘s basement and never goes outside. If you have half as much time to collect the humidity when it’s not daylight, than you have half as much water release back to the plants, dumbass. That’s a little trick called math. I’m sure that allude you because it has nothing to do with your Internet porn addiction. Someti
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Iâ(TM)m sure that allude you because it has nothing to do with your Internet porn addiction. Sometimes itâ(TM)s better not to speak and let people think youâ(TM)re an idiot then to open your mouth and confirm it.
eludes, my pal.
On the other hand, I don't get the disrespect for people who successfully grew cannabis. I feel like "easy as tomatoes" is a phrase from someone who hasn't grown tomatoes. It's not too hard to grow some crappy ones, but good tomatoes aren't trivial and neither is good weed.
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Some strains are definitely much harder than others. Anything from the northern lights lineage is more forgiving indoors than say girl scout cookies. If you look up genetics on leafly you’ll find a lot of indica/sativa hybrids trace back to northern lights if its indoor friendly. As far as tomatoes I find Roma have a lot less babysitting than say beefsteak and the yields are much higher. Soil pH matters. Knowing what you can grow nearby matters. Tomatoes and peppers seem to coexist fairly well.
Hydroponics with Soil (Score:2)
My first reaction to this is that they have developed a soil-based growing system with the ability to control the environment at hydroponics levels. If they can move this from the lab to industrial farming scale, then that could be a big deal. That's obviously a huge if. It might be useful for extreme environments, like growing food on Mars.
And just for fun, remember:
Hydroponics: Growing plants in water instead of soil
Hydrophonics: Talking to whales
Make a real life test (Score:2)
Then plant whatever test crops you want in both of them. Measure the useful crop yield.
I would be surprised if there is more than 5% difference between them.
In the real life dirt gets compacted after the first rain and doesn't see much air circulation to absorb meaningful amount of moisture.
And what's this stuff made of? CHEMICALLY? (Score:1)
Okay, it;'s god stuff, lots of benefits,
It's an improved Herakleophorbia IV. (Points for getting the reference}
What's it actually made of?
We've had years of chemicals being put into the food cycle. Herbicides, pesticides, everything.
Would appreciate knowing what it's made of, and studies over what byproducts it breaks down into the environment,.
We already have a nasty problem with "safe": microplastics
So wouldn't this be intelligent to know BEFORE we put it into wide use?