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Can Norway Grow Avocados? Inside the Hydroponic Experiment · Hydroponics Daily

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  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 founder of Utrema Ltd.
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  We manufacture interesting fertilisers, novel biostimulants,
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  and organic biopesticides.
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  And today I wanted to talk about an interesting topic, and that's whether people
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  should look to grow tropical,
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  warm-loving crops that are perennial indoors in northern countries like northern Europe,
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  Russia, Canada, or very far south, like the bottom of Argentina in the southern hemisphere.
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  So does it make sense economically? Well, I always thought it didn't make sense.
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  You know, if you're going to grow in places like Finland and Norway and northern Scotland,
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  it's going to be things like tomatoes and cucumbers they
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  tend to be the crops that are chosen fairly fast growing high yielding that
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  are needed on mass and spoil and spoil easily whereas something like a mango
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  or an avocado can be stored much longer and and cold stored and.
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  And take so long to grow that the energy required to grow them for years and years and years,
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  10 years before they fruit in a meaningful way is just not worthwhile.
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  You're better off growing a tomato that will harvest a massive yield in the first year.
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  Things like bananas, you're going to have to grow bananas for a number of years
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  before you get a meaningful yield from them.
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  Now the only makes sense
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  if you've got abundant levels of
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  free heating or extremely cheap heating
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  and also electricity and so
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  i was interested to see a story from norway from
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  the norwegian institute of bioeconomy research
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  or knee bio and one of
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  the researchers there carolina palmer is looking
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  at growing avocados for the norwegian markets
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  so going against what the conventional wisdom
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  says for growing these perennial tropical
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  crops and the reason why
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  is that because it's really interesting this the average
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  norwegian eats 2.3 kilos of avocados
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  a year which equates to 15 000
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  tons and that's because in norway they have something
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  called taco fridays that must be something in
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  norwegian because it's taco tuesday anywhere in
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  the english speaking world i'm pretty certain anyway she's been able to grow
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  avocados in the greenhouses and get a meaningful crop and they look like they're
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  good avocados is the variety has is that a type of variety should have done
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  some research really shouldn't i and the reason why is because they can use.
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  Waste heat from data centers, metallurgic industries, which Norway has a lot of.
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  It also has a lot of free, not free, cheap electricity from hydroelectricity.
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  And so yeah, Norway could potentially use this.
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  I think in Finland, they use geothermal heat and it's certainly in Iceland.
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  So I wonder if Norway also has geothermal heat they can use.
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  40% of the greenhouse operating costs in
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  Norway are from heating so not a
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  insignificant amount whereas in say Spain heating
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  would be next to no cost so that's
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  really interesting they tested it on 26 colleagues and all 26 said it was better
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  than the imported avocados more butchery and flavorful no salt or pepper needed
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  so an increase in quality as well as a potential benefit from the lack of need to import it. Now,
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  be interesting to see if any commercial partners
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  develop this i mean as i say in previous episodes i've struggled with i had
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  an enterprise where i was going to look at growing samphire because i thought
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  it would be better to grow it locally in really cheap way rather than importing
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  it from israel morocco and mexico but no one really cared they prefer to just
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  carry on with the woody stems.
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  And so yeah unfortunately i'm sure carolina
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  will make a better fist of it than i did she says that if
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  they close the borders tomorrow all Norway would have
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  to eat would be salmon potatoes cucumbers and
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  tomatoes which sounds bad doesn't it but why is anyone going
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  to close the border to Norway they're not in the EU so but they tend to get
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  a better deal out of working with the EU than Britain does at the moment we're
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  being punished for Brexit whereas Norway the EU doesn't seem to want to punish
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  Norway for any reason in particular maybe if they got invaded by Russia.
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  There was a TV program, I think it was on Netflix, where Norway got invaded
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  by Russia because they decided they were going to go net zero and stop pumping oil out of the North Sea.
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  So yeah, if they got invaded by Russia, then there would definitely be an embargo
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  on food going to feed invading Russians, perhaps.
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  That's the only scenario I could see where they would stop the border and they
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  wouldn't be able to get their beloved avocados for Taco Friday.
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  Who knew obviously the the average
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  income in Norway is very high due to the oil
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  income you know I think it's crazy it's like six
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  figure average income so they are
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  they do like the finer things in life over in Norway so yeah be interesting
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  to see if they start growing avocados commercially soon it was a very small
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  scale trial but they are expanding it and moving it for up to a six meter high
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  greenhouse with in vitro plants and micro-propagated plants.
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  LED lighting, proper irrigation and pH control.
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  They also found that the Norwegian bumblebees were able to pollinate the.
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  The tropical avocado plants they also
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  say that tomatoes took almost 40 years to develop into a stable high-yielding
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  greenhouse crop so they don't expect avocados to be commercial next year but
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  the knowledge they gain will now make it much faster for the next generation
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  so that's really interesting if you'd like to know more then you can find out
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  at the knee bio website n-i-b-i-o dot
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  no and yeah i think that's a really interesting story story story and um yeah
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  if you've grown a tropical crop like that maybe you've grown mangoes.
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  Like I said, Larry Ellison wanted to grow mangoes in his hydroponic greenhouses
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  in Hawaii, but he never managed to do that.
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  If you've managed to do it, then let me know. What's the most unusual crop you've
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  ever grown hydroponically?
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  All right. Thank you very much for listening. If you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts,
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  that would mean a world to me because it means that we shoot up the podcast
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  charts and it would feed my ego and help share hydroponics with a wider audience
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  amongst life sciences and gardening and horticulture chart, people who look at those.
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  utreema.co.uk where we have loads of interesting novel
• 7:09
  techniques loads of interesting products and a
• 7:12
  blog with loads of interesting articles about unusual cultivation
• 7:16
  techniques i was going to say not a lot
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  uh we did a micro we did a micro greens trial and we
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  found that the i was talking about cut up cardboard
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  as a as a grow media that one didn't grow
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  as well as the hemp fiber matting and
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  also they after a few weeks the the crop collapsed and what we call arable crops
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  we call lodging and then the two products that worked really well before for
• 7:43
  what was it chia seeds the pure grow products by growtech llc of south portland.
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  In states is that me let me check that main that worked really well on the chia
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  seeds and then for onion seeds their bio straight felt worked really well so
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  that was a a list of ingredients was,
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  biopolymer and natural fibers whereas the other one i don't think it's here
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  at list of ingredients blended hemp fiber so you want blended hemp fiber for
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  your dicots and your biopolymers for your,
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  monocots they work really well and they and the cardboard was crap all right
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  that's enough from me today thank you very much for listening to hide upon its
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  daily until tomorrow goodbye.