Lettuce Production Using Nano Nutrient-Based Hydroponic System: Vertical Plant Factory Production

In our planet, only 0.007% of available water is potable.And that quantity becomes each time less due to contamination, accelerated urbanization and increase of agricultural activity, which consumes 70% of this vital liquid.Besides, available soil for harvesting is overexploited and only use of pesticides and chemicals, very often harmful for human and animal health help to maintain his performance.One third of all arable land around the world is on the edge of collapse.For many years vertical farming using several methods like hydroponics and aeroponics have been considered as an alternative to replace agricultural ways to produce food and fodder crops.Anyway, even though they have been successful in several places specially on developed countries, deployment of these technologies is not yet reachable in a massive way due particularly for two reasons: highly initial investment on automation resources which includes sensors to measure and continuously monitor climate factors, nutrition parameters and other key issues like lighting and oxygen dissolved in water and particularly maintenance cost of facilities due to indoor climate and artificial lighting.Despite these challenges, vertical farming is a business that keep growing and receiving founds for R&D around the world.Io Farming, founded in 2020 as a joint venture between ICMA Automation and TTSA, both companies focused on development of technology for automotive, biomedical, and aerospace industries, create and continue in the development of vertical nano plant factory hydroponic system getting best practices and experience from similar systems but with a key part: geographical location of the nano plant.Located in Pabellon de Arteaga, small town 15 miles north from Aguascalientes City, capital of Aguascalientes State in Mexico, this place is blessed with a lot of sunlight hours and warm, temperate climate all year.Area is well known in Mexico as well as other countries for its multiple crops of vegetables and fruits such as strawberries.With no extreme climates, multiple crops can be grown year-round.This, however, has led to a severe problem of overexploitation of the water table to the point that crops such as lettuce can only be grown once a year.Recent studies in the area show that 120 liters of water are required to produce one single piece of lettuce with 300 grams of weight.We decided to start experimentation with lettuce because of the fast growing and immediate visualization of problems in plant since we can view leaves and roots as well and a lot of info is available for lettuce grow on hydroponic systems.Vertical nano plant has four key components: Galvanized steel racks with geomembrane trays, four levels each one.Those racks are located inside bio space covered with anti-aphid mesh.8 steel rack 6 meter long, 1.6 meter wide and 5-meter height make one production unit.Food safety practices are strongly applied.Automated control box to handle and monitor production unit.Handles irrigation and oxygen supply, besides of monitor nutrition key elements, PH and EC.Database software to collect data from all production units.Software in the cloud provides interface to analyze historical data related to Temperature, humidity, radiation and light, nutrition vs. development on plants and other growing related parameters.Laboratory equipment developed for fast processing of data generated by specialized sensors like Horiba.Nutrition applied directly to water is by far the most complicated challenge on this project.One small mistake can cause delay on grow or even permanent damage on lettuce.We have applied nanotechnology based organic product to Lollo Jokary lettuce variety as follows; 1. MSPC: Growth promotor as a seed treatment.2. Bhoomik: Root developer and Growth Booster during the growth of the lettuce plants (Weekly application) Related to results, we have produced 7 lettuce harvests, each one of 700 pieces average during last 18 months in the same 4 level rack 4 meter long, 1.5 meter wide, 4 meters height.Aphid infestation appears in only 5 plants of a universe of 700 plants only in two harvests.It was controlled with organic pesticide.Measured water consumption: 4 liters by each lettuce, 97% savings in water use.Density of 9 plants by square meter vs. 6-7 on ground.The nutrition of hydroponic formulation was additionally added with Nanotechnology based Products fabricated by Lab.DK-Nanotec.first of all the seeds were treated at 1 ml /100 seeds using micro aspersion method after that while the germinated seeds were transplanted in hydroponic system, the growth regulator and booster (Bhoomik) was applied via aspersion method at the interval of 1-2 week using 20 ml/ L of Water.The characteristics of the used products are mentioned in figure 1.Where the confirmation of their crystalline structure and the compositions are mentioned.Based on these results, we can produce 215,000 lettuces in 2,000 square meters in one year.65,000 lettuces are seeded on 10,000 square meter (1 hectare) by year in traditional agriculture.