According to the UN World Water Development Report, nearly half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for a significant part of the year.
As water availability becomes a more pressing issue, people have grown more conscious of water usage and where exactly freshwater is going.
Surprisingly, agriculture uses roughly 70% of the year’s freshwater withdrawals, with no signs of slowing down, according to the report.
A catch-22 emerges: the planet needs water to produce crops, which is vital for feeding the global population. But as the majority of the world’s water is used to grow crops, the demand for water ever increases.
One solution? Change the way we grow crops.
“In an era of smart watches, smart refrigerators, smart juicers and ‘smart’ just about everything, I’d like to introduce smart soil,” said TikTok creator Drift0r, “which causes plants to grow 138% bigger crops, while using 40% less water.”
The smart soil was developed by a team of clean energy and micro-scale engineering professors at the University of Texas at Austin.
By infusing the soil with hydrogel-material — a water-based substance specially developed by professors in their lab — the gel is able to draw water vapor from the air and infuse it into the rooted plant.
This latest hydrogel invention was inspired by a prior UATX study, by the same group of professors, which proved that low-cost hydrogel could literally “pluck drinking water from desert air.”
Referencing the team’s study, which was spotlighted in New Atlas, Drift0r went on to explain how the smart soil process works.
“It’s actually very simple,” The content creator said. “At night, the hydrogel literally takes the moisture out of the air and holds it. But during the day, as the temperature — and a variety of other weather conditions change — it releases that, rehydrating the soil…and it makes plants grow happier and healthier.”
He also said that a vital part of the cycle involved the release of calcium chloride, an inorganic compound that increases the growth and quality of plants.
In early July, the smart soil passed lab trials with flying colors.
The next step is seeing how the hydrogel-infused soil performs in the real world, in longer field studies.
At a time where 17 countries — including India, Botswana, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, and more — suffer from what the World Resources Institute refers to as “extremely high baseline water stress,” emerging inventions like this could have a positive ripple effect on reducing water scarcity around the globe.
“The global water scarcity coupled with a growing population has an immediate impact on food security,” said Guihua Yu, one of the lead authors of the UATX study.
“This new class of hydrogels offers a promising solution to meet the pressing needs of water scarcity and efficient nutrient uptake in modern sustainable agriculture.”
When Drift0r learned that 70% of the world’s freshwater is pumped into agriculture, he was floored.
“Imagine if we could cut that down in half, as low as 35%,” the content creator said. “That would be great.”
As his video came to an end, Drift0r admitted that he would stay tuned to any unintended drawbacks to this smart soil solution.
But even as he shared the news with a healthy dose of skepticism, he saw incredible promise in the agricultural endeavor.
“We do know that the smart soil is working,” he stressed.
“It’s temperature and cycle adaptive, it’s energy efficient, and it helps the crops grow bigger, which I’m all here for.”
Header image via Markus Spiske (Public Domain)
