It’s Salad Week on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today
It’s Salad Week on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today
Listen to the full episode here, featuring LettUs Grow on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today >>>
This week, BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today has been focused on the UK salad industry, highlighting the core challenges of energy, labour, and water and the businesses that are developing ways to overcome them. LettUs Grow aims to lead on innovation in this conversation and share how our technology can help address these core issues to help improve the efficiency of growing fresh produce globally.
Energy, water and labour - the key challenges facing our industry
The first episode this week featured Jim Monaghan from Harper Adams University, a leading expert on leafy salads. He emphasised the need for increasing investment in energy infrastructure for greenhouse growers and discussed the growing problem of water scarcity, which has been made even more critical by recent heatwaves. Next, Farming Today visited Adam Lockwood at Little Leaf Salads, where they discussed the impact of this year's heatwave, the criticality of irrigation and the challenges of labour shortages for the UK industry. The programme then headed to Riverford Farms and discussed their difficulties and R&D efforts to move away from peat-based growing.
How our technology can improve salad production
These same three topics often arise as the key issues for the industry. Our aeroponic systems are designed to tackle all three of these challenges head-on, our Advanced Aeroponics™ uses:
- 70-90% less water than field growing by recirculating and retreating our nutrient solution
- Zero peat growing media, offering a solution for commercial horticulture
- Automated rolling bench systems, to reduce the labour requirement and enable more efficient operations
Our 100% peat-free solution offers a viable alternative for commercial growers, helping growers move towards a more sustainable future.
Innovating for better future for salad growers
On today’s show, Sally Challoner interviewed our CEO and co-founder, Charlie Guy, to find out about the underlying technology that enables plants to grow more efficiently using our proprietary ultrasonic technology:
“These atomisers are vibrating at over one and a half million times a second, and they're effectively creating a wave. If you think about a wave on the shore where a spray comes off of it, that's the same that's happening here but at a microscopic level. So each atomiser is vibrating so fast that it's shaking the nutrient solution until it breaks apart, and that creates the nutrient mist that the plant roots grow down into,” Charlie demonstrated.
They discussed how this benefits the roots by creating an optimum environment for them to grow efficiently:
“These roots here really show the benefit of aeroponics - you can see these healthy, fluffy white roots. You get a really good surface area there, and they're able to capture the nutrients really effectively,” he added.
After almost 10 years of development, academic trials, and performance validation from growers around the world, we are confident in our ability to make a real difference to salad production techniques and are scaling systems with growers worldwide.
When Sally challenged the use of additional energy in these systems, Charlie explained:
"The atomisers are powered by electricity, but it's a very, very small amount. The yield advantage you get from aeroponics is far, far outweighed by the electricity usage. So, we need a bit of electricity in the greenhouse, that enables us to grow aeroponically, but it enables us to get that really high plant performance.”
Interested in finding out more?
If you’re interested in Advanced Aeroponics™ technology and want to find out how it can improve your salad production, you can book a visit to our Aeroponic Innovation Centre in Bristol to find out more.
Request more information or book a call here: info@lettusgrow.org