this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Breakthrough: "Electronic soil" boosts crop growth by over 50%::This research introduces an innovative approach to soilless cultivation, or hydroponics, by integrating electronic soil, or eSoil.

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 10 months ago (5 children)

You know what our body uses as a natural battery sort of thing? Salts! You know what is loaded with salts/electrolytes? Gatoraid! The conclusion is clear

[–] [email protected] 96 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's got what plants crave

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Let's salt the earth!! Lol

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Waaaater sucks it really really sucks

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Gaaatoooraaaaaid!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

It's full of electrolytes. Plants need electrolytes.

Amazing movie!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Welcome to Costco, I love you

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Subscribe to your esoil account. Brought to you by Kroger, for the low introduction price of $39.99.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

*per acre per month

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Barley seedlings, traditionally not grown in hydroponic systems, exhibited a 50% increase in growth over 15 days when their roots were stimulated electrically using eSoil.

I didn't know barley is such a masochist plant. I wonder if it's just barley being weird, or if other plants also like being (lightly) electrocuted.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is really only a useful technology for hydroponics, which is really only a useful technology in places that are short on arible land, but the realities of globalization means good luck beating the costs of importing from places that have more arible land than you.

Still neat, I would have liked to have seen an explanation for the change

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Hydroponic/aeroponic is way more efficient than growing in dirt. You can stack it as high as you want and grow way more per acre. On top of that you have the reduced amount of fertilizer and water and the increase in growth rate.

There is a reason why the best weed is grown via hydroponic/aeroponic.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (19 children)

It depends on what you mean by efficient. Cost efficiency wise, normal land farming beats out hydroponics by a mile. And really, cost efficiency is one of the top things to consider when it comes to farming on a massive scale.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Only if you want to use incredible amounts of electricity and occupy a lot of building space. Ignoring those things it may be more efficient but not when you look at the whole picture.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It doesn't actually take that much juice these days. On top of being able to use solar and wind generated power we also have leds that barely use any electricity to run.

Aside from the initial investment for the setup, the ongoing energy and resources needed for hydro and aero are most definitely going to be less than dirt farming especially when you factor in being able to grow year round. And don't forget the reduced amount of fertilizer and water usage. The water isn't lost to the ground with only a small amount of it being used by the plants.

Basically this is like ev versus ice. When you don't factor in everything, one looks better than the other but with all things considered, ev is way better than ice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

being able to grow year round

You can grow year round with low-tunnels (conduit and greenhouse plastic).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The best weed is grown in no-till soil, hence why living soil weed sells for more money.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Hydroponics, when combined with indoor, vertical farming, is the reason that the Netherlands are one of Europe largest exporters of food. Even though they're one of the countries with the least amount of farmland.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Efficiency doesn't matter when we have huge amounts of low-cost arible soil. We don't need to make the most of every square meter when it's cheaper and easier to just put seeds in soil. This is the problem.

Hydroponics are cool technology that is in every way "better" but useless.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

which is really only a useful technology in places that are short on arible landq

So, everywhere within the next 60 years?

:-(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Also quite useful for places short on water, or daylight, or clement weather, or low-value ecosystems, or where transportation is unfeasible due to accessibility, environmental conditions, market access.

Also quite good to alleviate food deserts, securing strategic supply chains, and supporting urbanisation for greenification, food supply, lowering transport and food security (with growing food also having positive mental and psychosocial effects).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People will do anything to avoid composting.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand why. It's a great way to get rid of your victims.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Robert Pickton, is that you?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I might try that next time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Must be a great movie! I am now truly inspired. Will try it on my next helpless person.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Years ago I was following "alternative science" channels (for fun) and one of their ideas was to put metal rods in a field and apply current to increase plant growth. Their other ideas were intelligent plasma generating free electricity and using water as fuel so I dismissed the "electric soil" idea as another idiotic experiment although the least crazy one. Could they be on to something after all? Not with the intelligent plasma of course, just the electricity and plants.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

The browns gas thing (usually "using water as fuel" by splitting it... Using power from the engine) actually has insanely specific be credible use case.

It turns out that in very specific engine types, you can gain additional engine efficiency that's worth the energy it took to generate the gas. The us army did a whole proper study. That net gain was, however, only present in vehicles not maintained on the usual schedule. So it did infact help some engine types that were not well maintained.

I know this because I did a dive years back. Effeciency be damned, building a reserve of browns gas that I could dump in when I wanted for a power boost sounded fun as hell to me. You wouldn't gain any effeciency (probably loose a ton) but you would have more power when you were mixing in the reserve you'd built up. I wound up not doing it because 1) the vehicle I had in mind was carb not fuel injection so no power gains there. And 2) dealing with generating, pressurizing, storing and delivering a gas isnt a ton of fun in a "for the lolz" project.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's hard to say without reading the actual paper, but summaries (from other sites, the earth.com site is terribly lacking) describe their approach as an alternative substrate for hydroponic cultivation, which would be both easier/more eco-friendly to produce, and allow conductivity. In any case it is far from "sticking a metal stick around".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

So I'm trying to find an academic article, but it's not just the substrate. They blew right past it in the article but there is electric potential applied, and the substrate is slightly conductive which is what allows it. They seem to imply that leads to better root growth but like I said the article barley mentioned the actual e of the e soil lol.

But bioelectrochemistry is a thing. I work on the other end, where microbes are depositing electrons, but I am aware of different technologies where the bugs use a potential as an energy source for specific reactions, usually around remidiating some nasty stuff in the ground.

Im less aware of it affecting a plant directly (I'd assume it changed the soil bugs or something) but it's not hard to picture. Good be something as simple as the potential changing the osmotic pressure and making it easier for the plants to take up nutrients or something.

But yeah, pretty far from a rod in the ground, although in some cases that is basically all you'd need. The bioelectrochemistry field always had junk science to contend with.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

This reads like a news story at the beginning of a disaster movie.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I grow using a technique known as "notill" where you guessed it, I never till the soil. Or replace it. It's organic, I even have helper bugs and worms. Inside. It's awesome.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's really weird to me that you write just like Jesse talks on the No Till Growers youtube channel

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