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Rutgers Health received a $607,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop “electroponics,” an alternative to the hydroponics approach to farming that would allow plants to grow under limited water conditions or in zero gravity conditions ready for deployment in space stations.

The idea behind the research is to adapt farming to conditions resulting from climate change where water is a rare commodity and to precisely target the delivery of agrichemicals that can cause serious environmental pollution.

“Increasing food security is one of the challenges of the 21^st century. We need to increase food production by 100% by 2050, and we need to do so in a more sustainable manner at a time that climate change reduces arable land and makes water scarce,” said Philip Demokritou, the Henry Rutgers Chair and Professor of Nanoscience and Environmental Bioengineering at Rutgers Health, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and principal investigator of the project.

“There is an urgent necessity to develop effective irrigation strategies, which utilize minimal water usage and optimize the delivery of agrichemicals for crop growth,” continued Demokritou, who is the director of the division of environmental health biosciences at the Environmental Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI) and faculty at the Rutgers School of Public Health.

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(Source: Rutgers Today – October 3, 2024)