In an international effort to combat world hunger, Prof. Meier Schwarz of the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) is in Peru working on a project he developed in Israel which is being funded by the United States, according to JCT president, Prof. Zvi Weinberger.
Schwarz is exploring ways to grow food in the arid regions of the world where both arable land and fresh water are in short supply and crops have never been grown before. The project is officially listed by the State Department as U.S. Agency for International Development Project CS-325, “Growing Commercial Crops Under High Saline Conditions Using Advanced Sand Culture Methods.”
The new system developed by JCT of growing crops in sand using brackish or saline water previously thought unusable for growing anything, offers a way to counter the threat of large-scale famine, Weinberger said. That threat is especially real in the Third World nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America where the problem of feeding ever-growing populations grows more acute every day, he observed.
USING A NEW TECHNIQUE
The new technique is being used to grow crops of tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers at the Universidad National Agraria Campus, 14 kilometers east of Lima and the Pacific Ocean where the soil is sandy and where no rain falls at all during the year. The project is under the direction of JCT Prof. Meier Schwarz in conjunction with a Peruvian staff headed by Dr. Salomon Helfgott Lerner.
The technique of growing crops in sand with saline (relatively salty) water grew out of extensive work in hydroponics. Hydroponics is the science of growing plants without soil, in an inert medium such as gravel, and supplying them with a chemical nutrient solution. Moving from hydroponics in the laboratory to growing plants in sand was a logical next step, according to Schwarz.
Growing plants in saline water imposes a strain on them, causing them to grow more slowly and with smaller yields. The main stumbling block has been getting the plant to channel less of its energy into the root system and more into building up photosynthesis tissue and producing the yield product.
JCT researchers have found that by carefully monitoring and controlling the flow of the saline water according to precise formulas during the various growing stages of the plants, this problem can be overcome and the plants made to produce satisfactory yields.
By successfully exploiting the planet’s abundant resources of sand and saline waters, new, previously uninhabited areas of the world could become available for settlement, Schwarz noted. Established settlements in such areas would gain new sources of food and new sources of income from selling their surplus.
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