Translator: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Byron Messaris
Hi, my name is Yuichi Mori.
I would like to show you
an interesting agricultural technology that we have developed.
We can use this plastic film instead of soil, to grow plants.
Mind you, this isn't Saran wrap.
(Laughter)
This is a special film we have invented.
All sorts of plants can be grown on this.
You can see an example right here.
Because our drive over here took so many hours,
it may look a little flat.
If we hold it at an angle, like this ...
You can see the plants are not coming off the foil.
Let's look at the other side.
You can see the roots are not digging through the film,
but they are spread around on the surface, not puncturing it.
Let's flip it upside down.
(Laughter)
(Cheers)
(Applause)
The film makes it possible to transport the plants
without damaging their roots.
We also made these containers out of our film.
And they contain liquid fertilizer.
This is what grew on one after we sprinkled it with lettuce seeds.
Last year, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi
successfully grew herbs on the International Space Station
using this nutrient bag.
Since it was done in zero gravity,
they didn't have to hold it like this; it floated around.
Like a houseplant, I heard it made the ISS feel like home.
(Laughter)
In fact, this technology has another important potential use:
it could be utilized to replace the terribly contaminated soil
left after the March 11 disaster.
That is what our goal right now, and we are working hard toward it.
Let me explain how we can use this film to grow lettuce.
Suppose this is the ground.
And we sow lettuce seeds on it.
This is an impermeable layer,
made of durable plastic that won't easily tear.
Then, we take this pipe with very tiny holes,
which slowly let out nutrients from the fertilizer.
We cover everything with a sheet of felt.
Then, we add our film.
You can use it to grow lettuce, or tomatoes ...
You sow your seeds, and you get this result.
Very simple.
The most important part of this technology is this film.
The film is made of hydrogel.
That's the super-absorbent stuff in diapers.
It absorbs water or nutrients very well.
Only one side of it is wet.
So the hydrogel absorbs liquid only from one side.
The other side stays dry, no liquid comes out there.
Since plants can't survive without water, on the dry side,
they desperately try to pull in water and nutrients from the wet side,
attaching their roots to that side of the film as much as possible.
Just like people get better at something, the more effort they put in,
the vegetables get much tastier through this process
and they become very nutritious.
When I first ate a tomato grown on this,
I couldn't believe how sweet it was.
The overachievers of the vegetable kingdom,
the tomatoes did even better than we expected.
Another characteristic of the film is that you can't see any holes in it,
but it actually has numerous nano-sized pores.
It was very difficult to create perforations of this size,
but we eventually succeeded.
The film can absorb water or nutrients,
but viruses and bacteria can't pass through it
because they are too large for the size of the pores,
so this way, the plants can be kept healthy.
So you don't need pesticides.
The thing we care about most when talking about the vegetables we eat
is whether they are safe and nutritious.
So by using this technology to grow them,
you can make sure that the produce is good for you.
Now, let me show you a video.
Could you pull it up? Good.
Around 20 farms in Japan are now using the film to grow tomatoes.
This is a big one-hectare farm.
All of these tomatoes are growing on our film.
There are about 80,000 tomato plants here.
You can see yellow ones and red ones, there are growing strong, all over.
This is the Tsukuba Market Garden.
The vegetables produced here
are very popular at grocery stores and online shops.
We have brought these to show you that we can grow tomatoes this big, too.
I wish all of you could taste our tomatoes; they are very sweet.
We can produce big tomatoes like this one.
This fresh melon was grown on our film.
You can use or film to grow tomatoes, strawberries,
cucumbers, peppers or lettuce,
almost any vegetable you can think of.
Another feature of this technology
is that since this layer lets nothing penetrate through,
the film can be used anywhere.
You can put it on contaminated soil,
or soil that is too salty, contains pesticides,
or even organic mercury, it doesn't matter.
So we can always grow vegetables safely, with no worries,
just anywhere, even on sand,
or on the concrete floor of a factory that went out of business,
or on ice, somewhere in Siberia.
We actually tried to prove this would work in the desert.
Could you roll the video, please?
In the middle of the desert of Dubai, there are no trees, no grass ...
Maybe some wild camels.
(Laughter)
After spreading our film on the sand,
we sowed tomato seeds that we brought from Japan.
The strong sunlight over there made it grow really quickly.
These people are from Oman.
We had a lot of visitors from the neighboring countries.
They all found it very interesting.
We believe that using this technology,
we could transform the barren desert into a productive agricultural land.
However, our main interests lie
in the ground contaminated by the March 11 tsunami.
This technology will solve the problems
of contaminated sludge, oil or radioactive materials in the soil.
We hope that we will be able to rejuvenate agriculture in those regions
by using this technology.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)