Alabama's STEM explores is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation, established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle.

Champions of servant leadership, science, technology, engineering, math right now at Alabama State.

Hi, welcome to Alabama STEM Explorers My name is Mitch and today I'm at Auburn University with my friend Dr. Daniel.

Tell me a little bit about this.

Hey, Mitch, glad you're here.

Welcome to Auburn University.

So we are in Auburn University's vertical farms.

You know, a vertical farming is.

Well, I think it's like farming pretty much without soil, right?

Yeah.

So the part without soil, that's when we're talking about hydroponics.

So we're delivering plant nutrients without any soil.

But the vertical aspect is a little bit different and new.

In vertical farms.

We can move everything indoors, okay?

And we can stack plants on top of each other so we can get more production in a small space.

That's the that's the principle of vertical farming.

Yeah.

And we've had these, this is one of our to shipping container model farms and we've been operating them for a little bit over a year now.

Wow.

That's a long time.

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah.

So we can look at some different aspects, a couple of things about vertical farming.

Okay, we're in a shipping container right now.

So normally this we pull behind an 18 wheeler truck, right?

It moves product all over the country, but we have it sitting stationary and we have it outfitted with all kinds of technology that makes growing these plants possible in this enclosed environment.

So we'll go over the different types of technology and see the whole steps.

So why don't we start with the seedlings?

Sounds good.

All right, so these are some of our seedlings that we grow in the vertical farm.

And this is a certain type of lettuce is called a leaf lettuce.

We grow different types of leaf lettuces and we we they're used in salads and they call them spring mix.

Have you ever heard of Spring Mix?

Yeah.

Okay.

This is a spring mixed lettuce here, so you can notice a couple of things about it.

Right.

These plants are really young What do you think they're growing in?

What do you think that stuff is?

You can pull one out, but just like a little bit of dirt.

A little bit of dirt.

It looks like dirt, right.

Or soil, but it's not.

So it's a mixture of peat moss.

You ever heard of peat moss?

Yeah.

Okay.

Peat moss and then coconut core are coconut fiber.

So the husk on a coconut plant.

Yeah, it's pretty sturdy.

It is sturdy.

And it's a perfect substrate or a or a medium to grow plants.

And so we actually drop little seeds down into these plugs.

We call them plugs, and the seeds germinate when we give them enough water and they grow under lights right here in our vertical farm.

And we typly grow these little seedlings for about two weeks until we transplant to the larger system, and then we grow them for another four or five weeks until they're ready to harvest.

So how old are these right here?

These are about a week old, so they're not quite old enough to transplant.

And you can see they're actually at some different stages.

So you see this plant?

Yeah, it's really small and this one looks a little bit larger.

So what do you think leads to that difference?

Maybe they're younger.

Well, yeah, you know, we actually see these at the same time.

So kind of interestingly, depending on when they germinate, after we see them, they can get a little head start and they grow really fast.

So you can see this is about one week's growth and they already have to what we call Those are not true leaves.

And then they have one Oh, okay.

And so when they get a little bit larger, in fact, why don't you grab one of those larger ones and pull it out and we'll take a look at that.

Yeah, I think that one will work and see if you can find some roots ins one.

Yeah, I'll try to get stuck in there, aren't they really good use.

Pull apart.

So you found some roots on there.

Oh yeah.

Right at the bottom there.

Look at that.

So what color are those roots?

Whitish looking it feel okay?

Yes, and that's good.

We want to see nice, bright white roots.

If we have nice bright white roots, that means they're healthy.

And if we can see them poking through that plug, then we know that we can go ahead and transplant them into a larger system.

Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah.

So I would say that some of these plants are ready and some of them are a little bit behind, so we'll probably give them about another week.

Cool.

So do you want to see what we plant them into?

Yes, please.

Let's let's take a look right here.

This is our next step.

This is our larger.

These are called zip grow towers, zip, zip grow.

Now they're called zipp grow.

Because I didn't design these.

Someone else dbut they're kind of like a zipper.

Yeah, I say that.

Okay, so this zipper, so to speak, is there just to hold the plants in place so you can kind of put your finger in there and feel is kind of tied in there as firm.

Right.

And then if you put your finger inside in between these two plants, you'll feel something else in there.

Tell me what you think that is.

Do you feel that it's a little harder?

Yeah, it's a little harder.

It's actually a cotton wicking strip.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So the.

So these are Styrofoam or foam.

They hold the plant in place.

The cotton strip then is what touches the plant's roots and brings the water and nutrients to the plants.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So the water is provided and the nutrients provided overhead and that there's water and nutrients, again, there's no soil is hydroponics, right.

Yeah.

And the water and nutrients are then pooled through this cotton wicking strip and they feed the plants and here they are.

These are about two weeks after we transplant them.

So they're about four weeks old.

Well, okay.

Yeah.

So you can see how much bigger that.

Yeah, they're a big difference.

It's a big difference.

That's right.

And it's the nutrients actually in the water.

That's right.

The nutrients are in the water.

So when you have hydroponics, that's what you have to do.

If you are a hydroponics grower, you can't rely on what's already in the soil because there is no soil, right?

Yeah.

And so there there are no nutrients in water, so we have to add all those nutrients.

Okay.

Yeah.

So do you know anything about plant nutrients?

A little bit.

Like, I'm wondering really what they're made of, like, wow, that's a great question.

So they are all elements on the periodic table.

The elements there's, depending on who you ask about, 16 to 18 essential elements.

And so some of the more common ones that you're familiar with, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium.

You've heard of those, right?

Of those, yeah.

Okay.

And then there's some that we call micro nutrients that would be like iron manganese, boron, copper.

Are they cd micronutrients because they're like needed and less suppliers?

That's exactly right.

So they're not less important.

So sometimes people think micro means less important.

It just means that they're required in lower amounts.

These are the micros and the ones that are acquired in higher amounts are called macronutrients.

So you have macronutrients and you have micronutrients and we provide all the nutrients that these plants need in our water.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Now, how do you think we get the nutrients in the water?

How do you like mix it around somehow?

Yeah.

And what source that we use you think.

What's that, a fertilizer.

Oh of course.

Oh right.

The fertilizer.

So.

So we have fertilizer that have all of the macro and micro nutrients.

And of course, we have to get the right quantities and we have to get the right balances between those to make these plants as happy as possible.

Yeah, so why don't we take a look at the nutrients?

Okay, sounds good.

So what I've done is I've sort of pulled out.

These normally are stored underneath where you can't see them.

Right.

But I pulled out a couple of different boxes.

We have three boxes here actually.

Okay.

So why don't we just open these and you can take a look really quick inside?

There's not much to look at.

They're just fertilizers.

But I do want you knows a couple of things.

So this one says in NPK N P N PK and it has a number eight 1536.

So N stands for nitrogen.

Yes, P stands for phosphorus.

It stands for it's kind of a weird one.

Yeah.

What is this, potassium.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Why is it k?

I don't know.

Okay.

But there is our NPK fertilizer which this means this fertilizer has 8% nitrogen, 15% phosphorus and 36% potassium.

Oh, okay.

But it also has other things in it as well.

The microbes that I mentioned, yeah, they're in there.

But sometimes we don't get enough nitrogen out of just using this, so we have to use something else.

This is called calcium nitrate.

What do you think calcium nitrate has in it?

Probably some calcium.

Probably some calcium.

Absolutely calcium.

And then nitrate, which is a form of nitrogen.

Yeah.

So we have to add that and then we have the last and this is probably my favorite one.

This is one that you might be familiar with I bet your mom's familiar with called Epsom Salt.

Yes.

You've heard of it from saw before.

Do you know what's in Epsom salt.

Not really.

I just know what it's used for, like some medical purposes.

So this right is is used for medical purposes.

Maybe you put it in a bathtub when you're sore, you can soak in it, but it's magnesium sulfate.

That's what Epsom salt is.

So it's got magnesium that's plant essential and sulfate or sulfur.

Yeah.

Both plant essential elements.

Okay.

So we add all these nutrients in different quantities.

Okay.

And they are injected then into our water system and the water system.

Then these nutrients are dissolved in the water and they are delivered then to the plant.

So the plants are getting water and nutrients from the irrigation system.

Cool.

Yeah.

Now so we're talking about water and nutrients.

What else do plants need to grow?

They need like light and light.

That's a good one.

What's another thing they need?

What if I told you that the next one may be the most important one?

They're all important, of course.

Right?

Yeah.

Have you ever heard of CO2?

Oh, yeah.

Like carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide?

Yes.

Right.

So CO2 is obviously in the air that you and I are breathing, but plants use CO2 to make sugars.

Okay, so they take CO2 out of the air, they make sugars with them, and that's used for their energy.

So they make their own food.

That's cool.

They they do that.

That's called a process called photosynthesis.

Yes, you do that.

Okay.

All right.

So they take energy from the sun and they convert it into sugars using CO2 to do that.

Yeah, that's cool.

Now we're inside this shipping container and it's sealed off from the outside.

So the outside air has plenty of CO2 for plants.

But in here, what do you think happens when these plants start using CO2?

And we're in an enclosed environment?

Well, not like let it out.

Right.

So they they capture the CO2, they do photosynthesis with it, and then the CO2 in the air gets lower and lower and lower.

So what we have to do in a vertical form is we have to increase the CO2 levels.

Yeah.

So we actually inject CO2 into this air.

Now you and I are injecting CO2 in the air right now.

Yes.

Talking.

Right.

So we are exhaling CO2 and that's actually feeding our plants.

Our plants are super happy when we're talking to them.

Did you know that?

Yeah.

It's kind of funny, isn't it?

But we inject CO2 using the same CO2 that you would use for a carbonated soda.

And we.

We put it in the air.

And because we can have such a small volume of air, we can actually increase the CO2 level much higher than what's outside and our plants will grow faster.

That's cool.

So if they have more CO2, they grow faster.

Okay.

So we mentioned water nutrients, CO2, and you said light okay, what?

Where do plants normally get their light from the sun.

The sun.

Yeah, but here we are inside again.

We have a problem, right?

We don't have any sun, so we have to provide light to the plants.

It's artificial light, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

So how do we do that?

Oh, let's see.

So it has to kind of mimic the sun.

It needs to mimic the sun.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Now, the sunlight is too bright for us to look directly in this kind of white light.

It's really bright.

But the white light has all the colors.

You know, you've seen a rainbow, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's got all the colors of light in the white light.

What we can do in a vertical form is we can select the colors that we want and that the plants need and give those colors of light to the plants.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what are the two colors?

Do you think that we give to these plants in this vertical farm?

Let's see, maybe.

Or I'm looking back there and I'm thinking red and blue.

Red and blue.

That's exactly right.

Now, which one do you think we get more of just by looking back there?

I'm going to guess.

Red.

Red.

That's right.

So if I so so behind us and I'll turn these lights on in a minute, we'll get to see the full effect.

But we have about 5 to 1 red to blue.

And the reason we do that is because that's about what plants need to do for normal photosynthesis.

They use a lot of red light and they use some blue light about 5 to 1 give a color.

And these are LEDs.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you've heard of these, right?

So they're individual diodes, light emitting diodes or individual amid a certain type of light.

What do you think the advantage is?

Obviously, we give the light, we get the plants, the type of light that we need.

But what's another advantage of LEDs?

You can control them more.

You can control them more.

We can put them really close to the plants.

If you notice how close they are to the.

Yeah.

You can't put the sun that close to plants.

Right.

That'll be a big probl in scorching.

You would score some or any any sort of light white lamp.

Normally they're hotter.

So we call these cool lights because they're only a single color.

They don't have all the other colors that are emitted as heat.

Yeah.

So that lets us get the lights really close to the plants and we can determine exactly how much light these plants need in a given day and we can give them that amount of light.

That's cool.

So, you know, when these lights run normally, when at night and night.

That's right.

So if you came in here in the middle of the night and no one was here and you open this door, it would be bright inside.

So it's the daytime for the plants when it's nighttime for us and vice versa.

Yeah, that's kind of cool.

Why don't we.

Why don't we do a little transplanting?

You want to move these guys up into a bigger system?

Sure.

Okay, let me set some things up.

This is all the work that we do in this vertical farm is going to be done right here.

So here's the zip gross system that I was showing you earlier.

Yeah.

So what we can do now is, is you and I can transplant some of these seedlings into this zip growth system, and we'll kind of see how that works.

Okay.

Sounds good.

So let's grab some pick out the biggest ones.

These, again, are not super advanced in age.

Right.

They're pretty young.

As long as you can see white roots at the bottom.

You see that?

All right, great.

So why don't we just transplant here?

You see where these lines are?

Yes.

So not the dotted lines.

Those are spaces.

But we line these up.

We plant on the solid line.

Okay.

You can plant one, say right here.

Okay.

And I'll plant one right here.

So you can be rough with these.

They're not you're not going to break them.

Okay.

And what we typically do is kind of squeeze them like this.

We open up the zipper and then we force them in just like that.

So, okay, so that takes a little getting used to force it in just like that.

You good.

And when you let it go, at foam is now holding that plant in place.

The again, the cotton wicking strip is pulling nutrients and water down to where those plant roots are.

Yeah.

And that's where the water and the nutrients are absorbed in the root system.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now after we planted all these, we can hang them back into the regular growth system, and this is what they look like.

That's cool.

Cool.

All right.

So you mean, how about we do this?

Why don't we turn on all the lights?

We'll get our fancy sunglasses on so it doesn't hurt our eyes.

And we'll take a walk down here and look at our plants.

Sounds good.

Okay.

Put these sunglasses on.

You are going to look really cool.

Yeah.

The red light should come on first, followed by the blue lights.

Okay, there they are.

There they are.

All right, let's take a walk down here.

So the reason we wear these glasses is not because the light's going to necessarily our eyes, but it's really bright, right?

Yeah.

You don't want to be staring directly into this light.

So what can you notice about these plants?

You can see a couple of things.

There's one type here, right?

This is a type of lettuce is a leafy lettuce.

It's got really kind of funky looking leaves.

You notice that?

Yeah, they're kind of spiky.

They are spiky looking.

But then you walk down here and now we have a different type of leaf, right?

Yeah, very round looking.

So remember I said we're growing spring mix.

Yeah.

What if I told you that all this lettuce goes to the dining facilities on our university's campus?

That's really cool.

Yeah.

Do you know how many students there are at Auburn University?

How many?

30,000.

That's a lot.

There's 30,000 students, and they each of them have the potential to enjoy a salad that's been growing right here in the vertical farms.

Wow.

That's really neat.

Pretty neat.

All right.

I have this little spot open right here.

Why don't we hang that container?

Because you can see the irrigations.

Come on now, right?

Yeah.

Now you notice that I didn't turn the irrigation on right now.

Okay, why do you think it came on?

Maybe it comes out like a timer or something.

Yeah, there's a timer.

There is a computer that is controlling every aspect of this farm.

The computer system controls the water, the nutrients, the light, the temperature, the.

You know, there's an air conditioner in here.

Yeah, yeah, cause it's not super hot, right?

Yeah, it feels nice.

And as well, it's 70 degrees in here.

Yeah, that's another advantage to growing, not only growing in a vertical farm, but actually working in a vertical farm so we can keep the plants as happy as is we can.

Obviously, these are lettuce plants.

They like to be at about 70 degrees, just like you and I.

So we keep it about 70 degrees in here.

And so think about this.

The students that work in the vertical farms get to come to work.

It could be you know, it gets really hot in Alabama.

It could be 95 degrees outside.

They come in here, it's nice and 70.

That's right.

So let's take a look at this.

So we have what color would you saat is?

I know it's a little bit hard to see, like maybe like a purplish red.

Purplish red.

That's right.

So those over there are kind of cut leafed and they're green.

These are a little more wavy leaves and kind of purplish red.

And then these are wavy leaves and green.

Yeah.

Okay.

So people like to have a mixture again, spring mix.

They like to see something that looks pretty on their plate.

And that's why we grow these different types of lettuces.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Kind of cool, huh?

Another thing that's really neat about these vertical farms is that we can fit lots of plants in a tight space.

Oh, yeah?

How many plants do you think are on this one wall?

Well, let's see.

Probably about like 15 on each row.

And, oh, I don't know how many rows there are.

Probably about 400 are.

That's a good guess.

But there are about a thousand plants long wall.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

So how big of an area would you need to plant?

A thousand plants outside?

You need a lot of area.

Yeah, well, all of a sudden now we have on this vertical plane and we don't have to have plants on a vertical plane to be called vertical farming, but we do have to have them stacked in some way.

And because we can think now in three dimensions instead of two, we can pack a lot more plants in a small area.

Interesting.

Yeah, we need a lot of food production because we have lots of people to feed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Another thing let me ask you this.

I asked you how many students there are.

Auburn University?

Yes, 30000 to 30000.

How many people do you think live in Alabama?

Oh, oh, I'm going to guess like 300,000.

Probably a lot more.

A lot more than that.

Yeah.

There are 5 million people.

5 million.

A lot of people.

And so how many how much let us do you think 5 million people eat in a year?

A lot.

Oh, how much less do you eat the year.

A good bit.

A good bit.

Good.

You sounds good.

Okay.

So if you're an average person you eat about 12 pounds of this type of lettuce a year, about 24 pounds total.

Yeah.

So if we produce 12 pounds of this type of lettuce per year for every person in Alabama, 5 million people, 12 pounds, that 60 million pounds of lettuce.

So that's a lot of lettuce.

But guess what?

We don't grow a lot of lettuce in Alabama.

Where do you think we grow?

Where do you think our lettuce comes from?

Norway, probably like out of state farms out of state.

There's two states in particular, California and Arizona, believe it or not.

So they're both out west.

So this is the type of technology that allows us to create the right environment to grow lettuce even in the state of Alabama, where we don't normally do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of cool.

Yeah, kind of exciting.

Okay.

You want to talk about the computer system?

Sure.

Okay.

So we mentioned water, we mentioned nutrients, we mentioned light.

And what was the fourth one, the really carbon dioxide?

That's right.

So if we get those four things right.

Oh, and temperature.

Yeah.

And temperature.

If we get those things right, then we can have happy plants.

Okay.

So as growers, you know, if you were to become a grower and grow in a vertical farm, those would be the types of things that you would be thinking about.

But you have help, you have a computer system.

And so this unit is controlled.

Everything in here, the lights, the water, the CO2, the temperature is controlled by one central computer.

Cool.

And we'll take a look at that computer pressure on it.

It's a lot of pressure on it.

That's right.

In fact, I'm glad you mentioned that, because in this type of farming, there's really a very small room for error.

It's little tiny errors lead to big, big problems.

And so that's one thing that we're definitely taking a look at here at Auburn University.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's take a look at the computer.

Okay.

So I was telling you that this entire farm is controlled by one central computer.

Here's the computer.

It's tiny.

It is tiny.

right here to control all the aspects of the farm.

But also this communicates with an app that we use.

So I can control things from my phone at any time.

But let's look at the things that we can control here.

So you see the readout.

You see temperature, humidity, light, which doesn't have a reading right now and CO2.

So let's hit CO2 first.

Remember I said we elevate CO2.

CO2 in the atmosphere.

Outside is about 400 parts per million.

And in here, what does that say?

I think it's like 1085.

1085.

That's right.

So we go up to a thousand sometimes even 1200 parts per million.

That makes the plants happier.

I didn't mention humidity and I should have humidity interplays with temperature and keeps the plants happy.

So we have to not only control the temperature but the humidity as well and then the lights as well.

Okay.

So we can go to individual controls here.

These are called IO controls and each one of these little channels controls a different aspect of the fa So if it's in red, that means it's turned off as is on green, that means it's own, so on and so forth.

So for instance, number six is our red lights on the left.

So press that home button right there and you're going to see what happens.

Press a little bit harder.

There you go.

All right.

So now we should have some red lights coming on.

Ah, yeah.

All right.

Now hit off and they should turn back off.

There's a little delay there.

Good.

They turn back off right now.

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to control that from anywhere?

Yeah, right.

And that's what the app allows us to do.

This computer controls everything in the farm right?

Yeah.

So these inputs when they're green, they're on, when they're red, they're off.

You just went through and turn the lights on and off so you just see how it works.

And because we have full control, right?

That allows us to make sure that the plants are happy all the time.

Yeah, that's cool.

So thanks, Dr. Daniel for all thisl information about vertical farming.

I assume there will probably be a lot more these coming up in the future.

Yeah, I would think so much and you're so welcome.

Thank you for coming to Auburn University and learning about vertical farming.

So keep an eye out right?

As the population grows in the world, we have to have better ways to feed people.

This technology will continue to to expand and you'll get to see a lot more vertical farming in the future.

Well, thank you.

We'll see you next week for another episode of Alabama STEM Explorers.

Thanks for watching.

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