When I started my PhD, my supervisor, among other things, told me that research is also revisiting the existing concepts and examining them. It is not always about plucking a blue-sky idea from nowhere or dreaming up something like that out of nowhere. That is why it is called “re”search. Based on my experience over the last few years, I now firmly believe in what he said. Very often we try to come up with an idea that we want to sound extraordinary. We want to come up with something that inspires awe and gaze. Nothing wrong in that, except that looking at the history of technological evolution, it can be seen that ideas and technologies that have been considered ground breaking and have held us in thrall, have often come up revisiting the existing concepts. Of course there are those which were the results of serendipity, for instance the discovery of penicillin. But that is not the topic of this post.
By examining closely what is considered common knowledge or given fact, people have made breakthroughs. Agriculture has long been associated with soil based farming. In fact, we seldom talk about agriculture without associating quality of soil with it. Agriculture, as we have known over thousands of years, cannot be practised without soil. However, Dr. Yuichi Mori, a professor in Japan, has re-examined the role of soil and realized that soil can be replaced by a suitable membrane that can provide nutrients to plants and physical support for roots to grow. This is “soil-less agriculture“. His company Mebiol markets the technology called Imec. Not only the technology does not need soil, the hydroponic membrane stores water and nutrients leading to need for less water for plant growth. The membrane may also block some pathogens that cause plant diseases. Field trials have shown that tomatoes, cucumber etc. can be easily grown and grown this way they in fact taste better and richer in nutrients. You can watch his TEDxTokyo talk here.
Amazing, isn’t it? Now I can safely try to grow some of these if I were to live in a land scarce country or in a high rise apartment! Interestingly, the earliest documentary proof of the idea of soil-less agriculture can be found in 1627 book Sylva Sylvarum by Francis Bacon with follow up research by some people over the next few centuries. However, Mebiol is the first company to come up with a technology that can be commercialized.
On Research, Education and Computer Systems 