Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Revolving Hydroponics: Inside Revoponics’ Vertical Drum Revolution

Transcript

Revolving Hydroponics: Inside Revoponics’ Vertical Drum Revolution · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host Dr. Russell Sharp, the owner of Utrema Limited.
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  We make unique fertilizers like gold leaf in the US or liquid gold as it's called
• 0:14
  in the UK and many other biostimulants and biopesticides, biofungicides, things like that.
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  Today we're going to be talking about a new type of growing system.
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  There are always loads coming about, people are always designing
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  new systems so it's always interesting to look at how the engineers are
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  coming up with new and wacky ways to grow plants and
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  previously we talked about dyson the company
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  famous for their vacuum cleaners and hair
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  dryers and well not famous for their wheelbarrows
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  but that's how they started out and they had
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  a rotating like drum massive structure
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  in their greenhouse for growing strawberries and we
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  said this rotating system meant that it was easier
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  to harvest because you could rotate them around and fit
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  more plants in per square meter and better
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  use of the lights could be lights inside the rotating drum
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  it was a massive engineering structure weighed tons
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  and it was really long you know it was industrial size large greenhouse structure
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  and that was like you know a drum on its side as almost like you know like a
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  rolling pin on its side flat on the on the ground and today we're talking about
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  a system called Revaponics.
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  And this, I think, is an Indian company, but they've installed one at Queen University in Canada.
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  And this is a vertical drum, much, much smaller scale.
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  So maybe only 50 strawberry plants on a drum that's about two meters tall tops, I would say.
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  And it's It probably looks like it's been 3D printed, perhaps.
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  Might be wrong, it might be cast.
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  But it's on a greenhouse or a controlled environment room on top of the university building.
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  And they're saying that it's easier for robots to harvest it on the rotating drum.
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  It makes better use of the space and the lights and things like that.
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  Many of the same claims that the Dyson system made, but this one's far more
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  suitable for indoor growing.
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  So imagine a conventional tower system, looks a lot like that,
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  but the towers are all rotating. So that's what makes the Revaponics system different.
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  So it'd be interesting to see if the company behind Revaponics is a success.
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  Let's try and find the name Agritech. Not the most...
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  Imaginative name for a company is it agritech has so
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  there are two organizations in the uk called agritech
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  one is a based in east anglia
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  one's a government organization and so
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  agritech but revaponics i like i like the name revolving
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  hydroponics interestingly the the the system it's been installed in queen's
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  university is it was actually a very old system and it dates back to like the
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  1960s and that makes it one of the first ever controlled environment rooms in
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  the world really because controlled environment rooms only started really in the.
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  Late 1940s in california institute.
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  In academia controlled environment rooms are often
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  referred to as phytotrons you'll hear this term.
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  If you're in an academic in a plant science department
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  phytotron just means a really controlled environment grow
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  room and where temperature is precisely controlled
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  all the environment conditions are controlled it might a
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  phytotron might be a cabinet a grow cabinet like it's
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  almost like a a fridge but it's not
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  cold inside it's conducive to plant growth and there's a light in
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  there small but they these growth cabinets are
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  really only for growing small plants like a rabidopsis the model
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  plant species or you might have a room you might go into a
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  university corridor and there'll be phytotron
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  rooms that we can go into they're very expensive to
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  run and they're very expensive to hire
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  out if you want to do a commercial trial i know that but lots
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  of universities have these so yes the
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  the queen's university one is a phytotron it's been
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  going for a long time and they'll be actively researching here
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  canada horticulture is very important to
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  the future of canada 95 of all
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  canadian fresh produce is imported primarily from
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  california and mexico traveling thousands of
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  kilometers before reaching grocery shelves and also because of that the shelf
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  life of these fresh produce is very low so it's not just the environmental impact
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  and 35 to 45 percent of fresh produce goes to waste because of that long trip
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  so if you can produce it locally with something like a revaponics system or a vertical farm then.
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  Potentially there's a massive saving and we
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  talked about again about like food deserts in canada where isolated
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  communities low income or native canadian
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  population you know the um the i want to say inuits eskimos
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  you know whatever the politically correct term is they often have
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  poor diets just as they say would the aborigines in
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  australia you know for a number of different
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  reasons which i'm not going to go into because it's all political and we've
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  had enough politics after yesterday's episode so yeah
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  i think this is an interesting system and i think
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  it visually it'll look really good to have revolving hydroponics
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  even if it doesn't produce commercial crops
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  it just looks really cool and if you're a university having
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  really cool stuff on your brochures and your videos
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  that you can promote to new students and and benefactors
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  and research councils that when you give you funding is always
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  good so revaponics revolving hydroponics who
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  knew thank you very much for listening to hydroponics daily
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  as always i at the
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  end of the episode i beg you to go on to apple podcasts and leave me a review
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  it helps me shoot up the apple podcast charts and helps spread the word of hydroponics
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  to the horticultural industry more widely and as we come out of summer all the
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  gardening podcasts will start to fade away and we can shoot up the charts even more.
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  So please do leave a review on Apple Podcasts, podcasts specifically.
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  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, goodbye.