Vending Machine Grows Lettuce Without Sunlight
We all know about the Japan’s obsession with vending machines. There is truly one everywhere you turn in most cities for almost every product under the sun but despite the diversity, there are vending machines and then there are vending machines.
The one below grows 20,000 heads of lettuce a year without benefit of sunlight.
This vending machine has become a celebrity, appearing on blogs all over the Internet during the course of the last few months.
Fluorescent 40-watt bulbs housed in a chrome structure that can be stored conveniently in any restaurant reap a surprising yield of 60 heads of lettuce per day.
Developed by Dentsu and dubbed Chef’s Farm, this revolutionary invention can also grow as many as five different vegetables simultaneously without benefit of sunlight.
Chef’s Farm comes with five nutri-culture beds, which are each installed on long and thin metal frames. The lettuce seeds are planted in sponges and each bed has its own set of controls regulating lighting, culture solution and temperature.
The target market for the Chef’s Farm are restaurants seeking locally manufactured produce that would be readily available.
For a mere $90,000, restaurants can buy their own photosynthesis machine, although it is not known at this point how much water these nutri-culture beds consume in order to pump out the lettuce so quickly or about the quality or nutritional value of the lettuce.
Since we can harness the power of the sun, what is next, the stars and the moon?
Poor Mother Nature.
She must be really p…ed!
(Link)
By MDeeDubroff on 19-12-2010
