Forget glowing in the dark. Let’s talk about growing in the dark.
Researchers are looking for ways to tackle food challenges by redefining how plants grow. And it might make you rethink what you learned in your fifth-grade science class.
Nocturnal plant development: Scientists are working on electro-agriculture, which leverages electricity to grow plants. The process would favor electrolysis over photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into acetate to give plants nutrients.
This method would allow plants to thrive off that acetate instead of sunlight—and grow at night. Researchers say the method would increase solar-to-food efficiency by at least 4x and reduce land usage needs by up to 88%.
Soundbite: “The whole point of this new process is to try to boost the efficiency of photosynthesis. Right now, we are at about 4% efficiency, which is already four times higher than for photosynthesis, and because everything is more efficient with this method, the CO2 footprint associated with the production of food becomes much smaller.” — Feng Jiao, study senior author and electrochemist at Washington University in St. Louis
Sparking crop innovations: Efforts are focused on high-value cropssuch as tomatoes and lettuce. The report’s authors also say electro-agriculture could produce egg and dairy proteins in the future.
Lab-grown meat could even make its way to the dinner plate through this method, especially with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Electro-agriculture will still take time to become more mainstream as it remains in the research and development phase.