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Fiber crops in hydroponics? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  And I've chosen a subject today that I think a lot of hydroponic growers will
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  be interested in, and that's fiber crops.
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  And for a number of reasons, you'll be interested. Maybe you won't,
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  maybe you will. Have a listen and see.
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  So I used to work in the fashion department at De Montfort University in Leicester.
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  That's one of my previous incarnations, one of my previous jobs.
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  And the reason I worked in the fashion department was because I
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  was doing a postdoctoral position looking at
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  alternatives to cotton and obviously
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  fibers turn into textiles and textiles turn into
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  clothes hence the reason i was in the fashion department and
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  i actually used to get joked about my fashion
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  by the other people in the work in there they used to have a go at.
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  My suits and ties when i used to have to wear a suit and a
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  tie and the reason we were looking at alternatives to
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  cotton is because at that point over a
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  quarter of all the pesticides used in agriculture
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  were used on cotton as a non-food crop
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  that's crazy it's also grown in
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  areas outside of europe and so brought in and so there's a sustainability
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  issue and then where it's grown
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  is very arid regions and the pesticides
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  and the heavy metals get then the fertilizers build
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  up in the landlocked lakes especially in places like china mongolia
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  places like that and that causes a
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  massive spike in cancer around those areas so very bad for
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  the environment growing cotton there should be more environmentally friendly
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  ways so using what we call bast crops
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  to do that and they're called bast crops because
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  unlike cotton the fibers don't grow
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  in a bowl they're like a seed they grow in the stem and the beauty of cotton
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  is that it produces single fibers these cotton fibers are long and thin and
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  single fibers whereas bast crops they're inside the stem and they're in bundles
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  and they're there to keep the plant rigid.
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  So unlike a tree where they produce wood, a tall crop like a hemp plant or a
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  nettle plant is able to grow to great heights because it contains bast fibres.
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  They're like the reinforced concrete of the plant world.
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  Now, if you want to get a textile out of these fibers, you have to turn them
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  into single fibers or very small bundles.
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  That's very difficult. And that involves either use of enzymes or more usually
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  a process of controlled rotting in the field. And it's called retting.
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  And that's where you let microbes degrade the
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  stems to the point where they can be pulled apart by
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  a specialized machine and and that's
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  how you get the fibers out of the crops and
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  so the crops were nettles we were looking at nettles
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  we were planting fields full of nettles we had these special german nettles
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  and the reason the germans had loads of
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  nettles was because during the in
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  the world wars they didn't obviously have access to the british
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  and the american cotton and so which
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  was coming from the british empire and so they had
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  to look for alternatives and apparently nettles were really good for parachute
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  cords and things like that where it had to be really strong and so
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  these are the common stinging nettle was was it was a great one but there was
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  also annual nettles anything but dead nettles dead nettles if you've ever seen
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  them they're not related they're in the mint family i think and so nettles was
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  a good one hemp obviously cannabis nettles and hemp are very very not.
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  Really closely related not in the same genus they're not
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  in the same family but those two families are in
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  the same section of the
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  the next order up of how plants are related so
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  nettles are hemp very closely related that's why you get
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  a lot of you can get things like you can get dioecious you get
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  male and female nettles and you've got vast fibers you can get you've got lots
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  of trichomes and in nettles they're the things that sting you and so very closely
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  related very similar growth habits thrive on high nutrition and so nettles and
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  hemp as I say very close related and the other one is flax so.
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  I've forgotten the name, the scientific name for flax. It's been a few years
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  since I've grown it. Linum, I think it is.
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  And that's obviously got that scientific name because it creates linen.
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  Now, linen was a textile that's used traditionally all around the world,
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  but around here it's closely related with Northern Ireland, although there's
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  very few flax growers left in Northern Ireland.
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  But we weren't looking to recreate linen.
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  We were looking to recreate cotton. so everything had to
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  be related to back to to cotton and there
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  are some other vast fiber crops out there such as
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  new zealand flax and i think possibly yucca
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  subject of our last topic and but the problem with
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  these other ones is that the the textile that
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  produce is produced is too rough and if
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  you want a cotton alternative it has to be obviously has to be strong
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  but it has to be you know easy to wear as
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  well and so that's why nettles and
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  hemp and flax were the chosen three and in fact there is a there's a species
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  of nettle that grows in iran that's called urtica cannabina so it's called the
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  cannabis nettle and that is actually being looked at as an as a as a new fiber crop,
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  it's not related to hemp but it just looks a
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  bit like it i think it grows like it and probably the fibers are very similar so
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  we looked at controlling the the
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  retting process the controlled rotting in the field and
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  whether we could improve that by adding
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  a microbial product to the fields so that it wasn't we weren't just relying
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  on the bacteria that were already present in the field and we looked at using
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  enzymes so conventionally available enzymes we looked at this bacteria that's
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  got the best one of the best scientific names i've ever come across and it was geobacillus.
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  Thermoglucosidaseus and it's been a good 20 years since i've ever worked with geobacillus,
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  thermoglucosidaseus or even seen reference to it but i always remember
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  it because it's such a crazy name it was this
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  species that only grew when it was above like 60 degrees celsius and it's found
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  around the world and yet in the soil and yet it doesn't grow when it's when
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  it's not 60 degrees celsius and you're thinking how is this species of bacteria
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  got all around the world it should just be,
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  specifically only be able to grow around like hot springs
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  and volcanoes and yet it's populated the soil all around
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  the world so that really interested me and then there was the so we looked at
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  enzymes things like lignases to break down lignin pectinases to break down pectin
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  which is like you know the jam that holds the bass fibers together xylanases
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  and so we can just focus and just get the,
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  the cellulose because if we relied on the controlled retting all the time the
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  problem was you go from controlled retting to just rotting and your whole crop
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  could just disappear overnight if the conditions were too good for the retting
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  process and you had to build up and we needed something that could be used by farmers without much.
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  Knowledge or skill and then what ultimately is
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  holds all these fiber crops back is not
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  the ability for farmers to grow it and not the technology for growing it
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  or even resting it it's just having the
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  machinery in place for processing
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  the fibers and then spinning it
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  so having the the fiber the the machinery that pulls the fibers apart the mill
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  and then the spinners and so that was that was a real there was like one one
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  or two machines in the whole of the uk that could do this and then for the spinning
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  we had to send all our samples off to.
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  Italy which was great because we got to go to trips to italy and have
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  like white truffle pasta while we were there it was great you know
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  university jollies but the project went
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  on for a while but then it seemed to peter out for a while other things
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  to consider hemp and flax there's
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  two different types there's the oil producing varieties and
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  there's a fiber producing varieties and flax and
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  hemp most of the focus recently has been on oil producing varieties
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  but we need to keep the the gene banks
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  there because you know we might want to return to the fibers later in you know
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  in history as other sources of fibers disappear i think a lot of the work on
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  hemp was done in the soviet union and there was a lot of hemp seed banks and gene banks,
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  over in the soviet union where as i said the nettles that was primarily focused around germany.
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  And also interesting about that was when i was when i
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  was looking through these seed banks i decided i
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  was i was bored one day and i went onto the
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  tomato page of these and i saw one called
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  i was looking at a load all the tomato seeds
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  and i could see that if you were an academic you could get these seeds for free so
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  it's like oh yeah great free tomato seeds so i was looking through
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  all the different varieties i was going to choose and i saw
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  one called the blaby special and it's like i've heard of blaby what's
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  blaby and then someone was like blaby's in leicester it's a village in leicester
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  and i was working in leicester so how is it and i did some more research and
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  i found out that there used to be loads of tomatoes grown in blaby sent down
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  to london just before the Second World War in the 1940s and 50s.
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  And they had their own tomato variety called the Blaby Special.
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  Went extinct so i got these seeds i grew them up and since then i've been invited
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  back to blaby if you go into blaby there's tomatoes on on the actual village
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  sign as you go in and like i'd go to the blaby tomato festival and i'd have
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  to taste tomatoes and as as the resurrector of the tomatoes.
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  And i hate tomatoes it's like raw
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  tomatoes and one day i went with this absolute stinking hangover
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  to the blaby tomato festival i had to eat tomatoes it was one of the worst mornings
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  of my life and i see the pictures now that day and
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  bright white got a white face look deathly ill
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  eating a tomato so we did that and then yeah i was able to resurrect a few old
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  tomato varieties for certain parts that don't grow them anymore because obviously
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  in europe all our tomatoes now either come from commercial greenhouses at scale
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  or or more more commonly from southern spain.
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  And now morocco more more commonly so
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  things like the manx marvel from the isle of man
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  and the blaby special i was able to resurrect those so that was all thanks to
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  the the fiber project it's called sting sustainable technology in nettle growing
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  if you would like to grow fiber crops and you want some advice then please do
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  get in touch as i say my expertise is in nettles with a bit in hemp and flax.
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  Flax was a poor crop.
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  It always got attacked by flea beetles, the flax flea beetle,
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  and it was a very sparse crop, whereas hemp and nettles were better because
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  they produced a really luscious and heavy crop, even if the oil crop wasn't there.
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  So you could out-compete weeds so you didn't have to put any weed killers down.
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  They didn't need any pesticides, unlike flax, which was attacked by the flea
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  beetle and you just needed a bit of nitrogen and they would grow like crazy.
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  And then another interesting story is that they then had to start growing a
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  variegated form of hemp especially around Leeds because what they found was the local...
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  Growers of what the crop you cannot be named they would
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  find the hemp fields and then plant their
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  own crop inside the hemp fields and then harvest it
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  before the farmers could harvest their
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  crops and so the farmers were getting
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  in trouble because they were getting caught by the police and so
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  they had to grow a variegated form so they could differentiate between
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  that and where these people were coming in and planting
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  their own crop which i thought was quite interesting so that's
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  been hydroponics daily for today it's been fiber
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  crops if you know anyone who's ever tried to grow fiber crops
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  hydroponically let me know there is a project ongoing
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  at nottingham university looking at growing cotton
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  in a vertical farm i'd be very
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  very surprised if you could make that commercially viable but i would be loved
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  to be proved wrong so let me know if you think you could grow fiber crops commercially
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  what would be the twist what would be the novel thing that could make it viable
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  be really interesting to find out thank you very much for listening see you tomorrow.