The world's population is growing steadily, and very soon we will face the problem of lack of food resources. Eating exclusively synthetic food is not a very attractive prospect … And agriculture, with the current scale, is unlikely to be able to feed all the inhabitants of megacities. Is there a way out of the situation?
Potatoes from the bank
Now, in connection with changes in the ecological situation, genetic mutations are taking place, putting certain plant species on the brink of extinction. Therefore, it became necessary to create banks where samples of endangered plants could be stored.
One of them - the so-called "Doomsday vault" in the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen, which is the world's largest collection of agricultural seeds, was opened on February 26, 2008. The foundation room is carved into the rock and is capable of withstanding various disasters such as an earthquake or an atomic explosion.
Currently, the seeds of more than 525 thousand species of grain plants are stored there. Among them, in particular, seeds of various varieties of chili and sorghum, growing in North America, as well as melon, pumpkin, peanuts, beans, sesame, hibiscus, many exotic plants, such as wild strawberries growing on the Kuril island of Iturup. All these species may disappear due to a sharp warming in the regions where they grow.
There are other large crop banks in the world. For example, in West Sussex County (UK), the Millennium Vault was opened in 2000, sponsored by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Now the bank stores seeds of about 25 thousand species of cultivated plants.
Genetic banks for the conservation of endangered plant species are likely to appear in Russia soon. One of such repositories is already being created on the basis of the Volgograd Botanical Garden, where the plant biotechnology laboratory operates. The bank will allow preserving plant genotypes, even if plant cells and tissues exist in a single copy.
Promotional video:
Laboratory specialists have already mastered the methods of reproduction of certain species without damaging donor plants. In particular, thanks to laboratory technologies, it will be possible to preserve rare plant species from the Sochi National Park. A federal DNA bank for rare and endangered flora will be formed soon.
Farms - to megacities
Experts from the University of Columbia, in turn, propose a radical solution to the problem of food resources. They believe that it is possible to grow crops directly in urban settings. The project is called "Vertical Farm".
According to the authors of the project, it is planned to build high-rise buildings of tens of floors. They will house hydroponic greenhouses and cattle compartments (since it is unlikely that people of the future will agree to become all vegetarians, and you cannot do without milk either).
Farms are designed to be extremely automated. Artificial lighting devices will complement the windows. Special devices installed on the roof and in the basement will partially supply the building with electricity. In addition, high-rise farms are planned to be equipped with a system for processing organic waste.
According to scientists, with the current level of technology, a one-block farm with a building of 30 floors can provide food for 10 thousand people.
By the way, similar experiments have already taken place. So, in 2005, a small automated farm began to operate in the basement of one of Tokyo's skyscrapers.
Last year, a three-story greenhouse was built in the South Korean city of Suwon. And on the shelves of Dutch supermarkets there are products from an underground agricultural complex built by PlantLab.
More recently, the Swedish-American company Plantagon International has begun building vertical greenhouses, which have been named "plantagons". The construction of the first complex in the Swedish city of Linköping is underway.
The wonder farm will be a transparent ball as high as a 17-storey building. Vegetables will be grown in trays arranged in a giant spiral. Seeds and tubers will be delivered upstairs by special lifters, and as they ripen, they will go down an automatic conveyor down to the ground floor - to the place of harvest.
Space plantations
As space exploration progresses, the problem of the food ration for cosmonauts on long flights will also arise. We are talking about travels to Mars and other planets, because someday they will take place! Lunch for one person on the ISS today costs over $ 600. And this is without the cost of bringing it into orbit. It would be much cheaper to transfer the astronauts to self-sufficiency! Why not try growing food on board the spaceship? - the NASA experts thought. They decided to start with sweet potatoes, which are quite popular in the United States.
One of the main problems is that there is not enough space on board the controlled ships to breed different crops. So the main task is to develop a methodology that allows you to grow plants with high yields, the plantations of which will be as compact as possible.
A few years ago, the Chinese company Haikou already dumped potatoes grown on a spaceship on the market. It has more starch than regular potatoes and has a deep purple color. Therefore, it was called the "purple orchid". Cosmic potatoes are delivered to restaurants, where chefs offer visitors a choice of over 60 dishes from it. For example, "Ball of Cod and Purple Orchid" - four balls of fish pulp sprinkled with purple potato chips. All this rests on a "bed" of fruit salad.
However, this is just a pleasant exotic, and the product, as you can see, is intended more for earthlings, and not for space travelers. Why did NASA choose sweet potatoes? The fact is that its nutritional value is much higher than that of ordinary potatoes. The weight of mature tubers can reach 10 kilograms. Each tuber contains up to 30 percent starch, up to 6 percent glucose, as well as other useful substances - carotene, mineral salts and various vitamins. Another advantage of sweet potato is that it grows well indoors and is well compatible with other plants.
Sweet potato is a bindweed plant that usually propagates by shoots, "capturing" decent areas. A single plant requires a space of approximately 4.5 x 5 meters. Of course, under conditions of space flight, this is unrealistic. Therefore, NASA came up with the idea of limiting the excessive "creep" of sweet potatoes using a special wire cone.
As for growing sweet potatoes in space, in addition to the compact space, a big plus is that other plants can be grown inside the cone entwined with a stem.
Photosynthesis in all plants will be carried out using LEDs. By the way, it is the use of light-emitting diodes for photosynthesis processes in space conditions that will become the next scientific project of NASA.
One way or another, regardless of whether we buy vegetables grown from seeds stored in special banks, or on plantations in space, or maybe on skyscraper farms, we will have to come to terms with the fact that agro-industrial activity in its the present form will eventually come to an end …
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №20. Author: Ida Shakhovskaya