n.thing, a South Korean agriculture company, at the CES 2020, won the “CES 2020 Best of Innovation” award for its innovative plantation farms that do not smell like manure or allow contamination to spread among plants all while allowing plants’ nutrients to be customized for the consumers, to a certain extent. Called the “Planty Cube”, these farms use hydroponic and vertical farming techniques to grow and produce high-quality plants throughout the year.
Planty Cube is basically a closed container that, from the inside, looks like a laboratory. The basic unit of the Planty Cube is a module unit called the “Pickcell”. A Pickcell is a small cubic container having all its dimensions as 5 centimeters and a weight of 16 grams and one pickcell can grow one seed in it. Multiple Pickcells are attached with each other to form a “Planty Square”, while multiple Planty Squares are then joined to form the “Planty Cube’.
The Pickcells in the Planty Cube are arranged on long shelves and stacked over one another; hence, vertical farming. Vertical farming is a sustainable method, of growing plantation that barely uses any soil, uses mostly water and takes up a minimal space. These types of farms are based on indoor plant growing methods.
The Planty Cube is regulated completely by computerized systems, and also has a smartphone application. This computerized system controls parameters for plant growth such as temperature, humidity, light intensity etc for optimal plant growth and, also, regularly keeps monitoring the plant health and growth status. The light is managed with installed LED lights inside the Planty Cube container.
All these parameters can be checked by the person managing the plants and can be set and managed through the mobile application. The system also provides information on the needs of different plant crops, through its database. This also allows users to manage their farms from long distances.
The option to customize physical parameters allows the production of plants all-year round, and in the best quality; unlike traditional farming where the best quality of most plants is only available during certain months of the year, or in certain parts of the world.
The biggest benefit definitely has to be that the Planty Cube allows separation of the containers in case of the appearance of a disease that can be spread throughout the crop; while in traditional methodology if a disease outbreaks the plantation is completely damaged. CEO of n.thing, Leo Kim says, “Because of the module-based design, the farm is easy to install. The Cube’s container-concept is convenient in a way that it allows a faster counter-response to contamination compared to a large-scale factory. We don’t have to shut down the entire facility but just isolate containers separately. The module basis also enables easy replacement of hardware parts.”
Planty Cube also has the great benefit of producing vegetables with custom nutrients, for example n.thing has produced plants with zero potassium and nitrate content, for people with kidney problems and daibetes, respectively.
Planty Cube is a very low cost alternative to normal farming; it allows the people to start and to grow their farming businesses at greatly lower costs and in less time, with a high efficiency rate. It is a great innovation addressing the possible food short issues of the future.
All Images: © n.thing
h/t: Home Crux