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Growing Edamame Indoors: Japan's Hydroponic Breakthrough · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for
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  everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Shaw. I am the founder of Utrema Limited,
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  and we make novel fertilizers,
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  interesting biostimulants, and organic biopesticides that can be used in conventional
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  or hydroponic or organic cultivation.
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  Today, I thought I'd do an episode about the cultivation
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  of a japanese delicacy adami or
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  adamami perhaps i eat
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  this and i have no idea how you pronounce it i pronounce in
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  our house we pronounce it adami but maybe
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  that's incorrect anyway it is a staple in japanese and asian culture far east
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  and i eat it when i go to wagamamas if you ever go to wagamamas in the uk then
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  they they serve you this and it's delicious It's a legume,
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  so it produces a pod that contains beans that you then pop out.
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  You don't eat the coating, it's not like monge-tu.
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  So you eat them and the problem is that they are harvested in the summer in
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  Japan and the quality deteriorates rapidly in storage.
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  So a number of Japanese scientists have looked at cultivating it hydroponically
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  under LED lights indoors, where they can control the light, the temperature,
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  the humidity, carbon dioxide, and nutrient delivery. And.
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  They've been able to produce stable yields independent
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  of the climatic conditions and it was conducted at
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  Jose University and the University of Tokyo and
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  this the these big guys have been working on LED lighting for
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  a number of years in tomatoes and so they thought they'd
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  look at this as well so it was Professor Toshio
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  Sano and from the Faculty of
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  Biosciences and Applied Chemistry so it's
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  so i said it's usually harvested in the summer but the freshness deteriorates
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  and long-term storage is difficult so to
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  overcome those barriers they're looking at hydroponics particularly nft using
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  rockwool and then mist culture they they talk about so i'm not sure what mist
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  culture involves if you know is it aeroponics but it can't be if it's nft and
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  rockwool so something's lost in translation there they found more vigorous plant
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  growth producing stronger stems,
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  healthier leaves and greater biomass than other hydroponic methods and traditional
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  open field cultivation.
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  So the method could be used to produce in conventional farms.
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  What else can we say about this study on these crops?
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  The hydroponic method produced a higher sugar content which is good because this is a sweet.
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  Delicacy even though it's a vegetable can be
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  used in desserts as well i think the free amino
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  acid levels were lower so perhaps less health
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  benefits but the isoflavones which give the compounds the health benefits as
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  well and the tastes were significantly higher so this suggests that led lighting
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  may stimulate the synthesis of those bioactive compounds so altogether better
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  taste healthier promotion.
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  The research is important because adami is a nutrient-dense,
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  high-protein crop, whereas most hydroponic crops are not high-protein,
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  and certainly leafy greens are not nutrient-dense.
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  So it breaks the long-standing assumption that legumes can't be cultivated in
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  artificial light-type plant factories.
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  So it's a world-first success demonstrating and growing delicious adami anywhere, anytime. And...
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  Be interesting to know if they used a nitrogen-based fertilizer because
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  you can grow just because legumes don't
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  need nitrogen because of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in
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  their root nodules doesn't mean that you
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  can't supply nitrogen so it's just that
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  you don't get that you're basically paying for nitrogen when you don't have to
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  so it'd be interesting to see if anyone is looking
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  to grow a legume and we're looking are looking for a nitrogen-free feed then
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  we can make one up here utreema for you that's not a problem we can we'd be
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  we'd love to research production of any type of legume in hydroponics with you
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  and we can lend our plant nutrition expertise,
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  to and it could be something that you could build ip around
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  because there are not many legume crops it doesn't
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  have to be adami although that is a good high value crop could be chickpeas
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  could be anything you want to be a short crop that's the other thing is the
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  beauty of Adami is that it's not a big long trellis forming type of plant like say monge 2 would be or.
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  Runner beans or broad beans I don't know what you call those in America farba
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  beans, cannelloni kidney beans,
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  you want a short plant, especially for an indoor vertical farm where you can
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  get multiple layers shorter plants, more in line with say lettuce than tomato and,
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  this one works with that. So yeah, if you are interested in looking at optimizing
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  the nutrition for a different crop, then I think legumes is a great one to try, because things like.
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  Mangetu, adami, they're a bit more higher value than lettuce,
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  which, you know, as we've talked about in the past,
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  struggles to make money for many vertical farms.
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  So maybe my friend Chris down in Dartmoor would be interested in this one for
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  his new hydroponic farm. If so, get in touch.
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  The other reason why legumes are not grown often in hydroponics is because you
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  have to have the plants long enough for them to flower and be pollinated by bees.
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  Legumes are pollinated by bees, bumblebees, so you need a pollinator in there
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  or some sort of hand pollination, some sort of vibrating tools to pollinate them.
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  And you then have to wait for the seeds to set and fill with the protein.
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  And being an annual, they will then die off and you'll have to start again.
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  So I guess you would struggle to buy this.
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  Well, no, you should be able to buy adami seeds in the UK and in America.
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  It's not just in Japan. And even if you struggle, I'm sure you can get someone to import them.
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  Anyway, that's been a really interesting story, even if it's not been a long one.
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  If you've had success growing legumes in hydroponics, then please let me know.
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  I am i think i've grown some obviously there's
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  microgreens and things like pea shoots and stuff like that but
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  you don't even need any fertilizer and hardly any light to grow those so they
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  are not difficult at all so i suppose they are the one hydroponic crop but when
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  you get beyond that and you actually have to harvest what is essentially the
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  fruit and the seeds then it becomes a lot more difficult and i'm not aware of
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  anyone doing that commercially,
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  let me know if I'm wrong. Okay, that's been Hydroponics Daily for today.
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  If you found this useful, please do leave us an Apple podcast review if you're
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  listening on an Apple device. If you're not listening on an Apple device,
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  then just make sure you follow the podcast and please check out utreema.co.uk.
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  As I say, we're experts in plant nutrition and if we don't have something that
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  you need, we could either make it or tell you where to buy it from,
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  the best source and we won't even make any money from that or just help you
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  out at the goodness of our heart
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  because you listen to our podcast thank you very much for listening to today
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  and i've no idea what i'm going to talk about tomorrow but i'm sure it'd be
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  an absolute banger goodbye.