produce on salt water

[MonsieurM]

I just thought of an easy way to start cultivating your produce over sea water (preferably in a shallow cove or lagoon)


I was watching a doc on the Aztec Civilisation and they talked about Chinampa:

Chinampa is a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangle-shaped areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico.

Chinampa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It got me thinking about this inventor :
Mark TONKIN

Salt Water Irrigation

http://www.rexresearch.com/tonkin/tonkin.htm

A British company has created an irrigation system that can grow crops using salt water. <br /><br />The dRHS irrigation system consists of a network of sub-surface pipes, which can be filled with almost any water, whether pure, brackish, salted or polluted. The system can even take most industrial waste-water and use it without the need for a purification process.

It just clicked together and I'm sure you can imagine the rest:

Chinampa + Salt Water Irrigation= fresh produce

Ancient Genes Used To Produce Salt-tolerant Wheat

Researchers develop highest yielding salt tolerant wheat

let me know what you think...



Cove



Lagoon




links:
Irrigation system can grow crops with salt water (Wired UK)

http://www.rexresearch.com/tonkin/tonkin.htm

Build your own Chinampa

[MonsieurM]

I think you could recycle a lot of products to build a "modern" version of the Chinampa.

or read this thread to learn more:

http://www.energeticforum.com/agricu...started-3.html

[Savvypro]

The following is copyed from post 37 of the Soil Remineralization thread (http://www.energeticforum.com/agricu...html#post95763):

I just came accross the following article and thought about this thread.

The news article:

Watering Tomato Plants With Diluted Seawater Boosts Levels Of Antioxidants

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2008) — Watering tomatoes with diluted seawater can boost their content of disease-fighting antioxidants and may lead to healthier salads, appetizers, and other tomato-based foods, scientists in Italy report.

Besides their use in a variety of ethnic food dishes, tomatoes are one of the most commonly grown home garden vegetables, particularly cherry tomatoes. Scientists have linked tomatoes to several health benefits, including protection against prostate cancer and heart disease. Researchers have known for years that seawater does not stimulate the growth of tomatoes, but scientists know little about its effects on the nutritional content of the vegetables.

In the new study, Riccardo Izzo and colleagues grew cherry tomatoes in both freshwater and in a dilute solution of 12 percent seawater. They found that ripe tomatoes grown in the salty water showed higher levels of vitamin C, vitamin E, dihydrolipoic acid, and chlorogenic acid. All of these substances are antioxidants that appear to fight heart disease, cancer, aging, and other conditions. Using saltwater to irrigate tomato crops also appears to be a promising alternative to freshwater irrigation, especially in the wake of water shortages in some parts of the world, the researchers note.

The article "Irrigation with Diluted Seawater Improves the Nutritional Value of Cherry Tomatoes" is scheduled for the May 14 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Source: Watering Tomato Plants With Diluted Seawater Boosts Levels Of Antioxidants


The paper abstract:

The aim of this study was to assess whether the nutritional value of cherry tomato can be improved by irrigating plants with diluted seawater (12%; EC = 10 mS/cm in comparison with a control at EC = 4 mS/cm). Berries of cherry tomato cv. Naomi were analyzed at the red-ripe stage for the contents of NADPH and NADP+ as well as for the amounts of the main antioxidants, such as ascorbic acid, lipoic acid, tocopherols, and phenolic acids. As compared to the controls, the fruits of salt-treated plants showed a higher titratable acidity and a higher concentration of reducing sugars. The fruits picked from tomato plants irrigated with diluted seawater produced berries characterized by a higher nutritional value. Following salinity, berries showed higher amounts of vitamin C, vitamin E, dihydrolipoic acid, and chlorogenic acid. It was hypothesized that protocatechuic, vanillic, caffeic, and ferulic acids were utilized to counteract the damaging effects of salinity-induced oxidative stress, allowing tomato fruits to maintain a high reduced status even following salinization.

Source: Irrigation with Diluted Seawater Improves the Nutritional Value of Cherry Tomatoes - Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (ACS Publications)

Although the article and the paper focus on Tomatoes, the use of sea water without filtering is actually beneficial. The process covered in the opening post would be counter productive as sea water is the best natural mineral solution that is readily available.

The main problem is the high level of Sodium Chloride compared to other minerals in sea water. The goal should be to develop a process that reduces the levels of just Sodium Chloride to a level which isn’t excessive and requires the plants to waste energy combating it’s effects.

I’ve read of two methods which might work. One involves evaporation, where you leave the sea water out in the sun. At some point the sodium chloride forms crystals which can be removed, leaving a solution which is more concentrated with less water but with a lower concentration of Sodium Chloride. As the solution is at a point where the Sodium Chloride is no longer able to stay dissolved in the solution. That’s the theory, wherever it’s that easy to separate out the Sodium Chloride leaving the other minerals intact - is another issue.

The other one involves making a concentrate from sea salt. You place the sea salt in a cotton bag and then dunk the bag (with the sea salt inside) into a tub of water, leaving it there for 3 minutes. Then you hang the bag over a bowl and allow the liquid to drip into a dark glass jar that is placed inside the bowl. The resulting liquid is called Mother Liquor, and can be used to treat over 600 illnesses and diseases.

[MonsieurM]

One involves evaporation, where you leave the sea water out in the sun. At some point the sodium chloride forms crystals which can be removed, leaving a solution which is more concentrated with less water but with a lower concentration of Sodium Chloride. As the solution is at a point where the Sodium Chloride is no longer able to stay dissolved in the solution. That’s the theory, wherever it’s that easy to separate out the Sodium Chloride leaving the other minerals intact - is another issue.

You have given the answer yourself, because the environment i suggested is close to the sea, in a shallow cove or lagoon , so the produce are constantly in contact with sea water in diluted form (as fog, evaporation, morning dew and so on). So the produce get their fresh water through the pipe at the bottom while at the same time get their diluted sea water from the top through water deposited by the various natural phenomenon.

[MonsieurM]

you could also add a greenhouse to the chinampa with a little extra sea water surface covered to collect the evaporated water for later use. It is not necessary to cover the chinampa with it(but it is useful, if you want to saturate the atmosphere with saline humidity), its main purpose is water collection.

[Savvypro]

You have given the answer yourself, because the environment i suggested is close to the sea, in a shallow cove or lagoon , so the produce are constantly in contact with sea water in diluted form (as fog, evaporation, morning dew and so on). So the produce get their fresh water through the pipe at the bottom while at the same time get their diluted sea water from the top through water deposited by the various natural phenomenon.

Not quite, as I stated it's only theory, in fact the full theory is that it would lead to a solution with a salt content of about 2.5%.

Reducing the Sodium Chloride content is the only means to be able to effectively use the sea water to grow stuff, without having to worry about salt poisoning. The other way is to use sea water but in diluted quantities but you still have to monitor for slat buildup.

The evaporated sea water will be highly depleted of it’s mineral content, with the remaining solution having nearly all its minerals.

The main problem with using shallow coves or lagoons is not about using the sea water, it's the growing by the sea it's self.

A good example is the boom in shrimp farming in third world countries, where massive amounts of mangrove forests have been cut down to make way for the shrimp farms.

Apart from the loss of habitat, you have a loss of a vital sea barrier. For example in the late 50's to early 60's there was an earth quake off the coast of Bangladesh (if memory servers), which resulted in a tsunami. The tsunami hit an ares which was covered by mangrove forests - no loss of life or major damage. However 50 or so years later a similar event took place, this time the mangrove forests had been cut down to make way for shrimp farming - the result was over 3,000 people lost their lives and major damage.

[MonsieurM]

you are quite right about the loss of habitat caused by deforestation and sea degradation. Not being an engineer, i would think then the best way would be to create a floating (in open sea) multiple level aquaponic system. just like the following example:

YouTube - &#x202a;GOOD: The Science Barge&#x202c;&rlm;

in simple words: a floating farm





Floating Permaculture Farm

and the following system would still allow you to have fresh water and diluted sea water (through evaporation) at a low cost

Ningyu Zhou -- deslination heliostat

The new invention, by scientists at the School of New Materials and New Energy in Hehai University (HHU) and Nanjing Fiberglass Research and Design Institute, has been reported in the local media.

According to Zhou Ningyu, a senior engineer with HHU, the new desalinating device consists primarily of a heliostat, which absorbs solar power and turns it into heat. The heat is then used to bring water to boiling point, and when vaporization occurs the salt becomes separated.

[Goncalo]

the best way would be to create a floating (in open sea) multiple level aquaponic system.

The problem I see with that kind of structures is that salty water is highly corrosive. How long would it take until structural damage would make it unsafe?