Event / Awards
Innovation Awards 2013 Winners
CEATEC 2013 INNOVATION AWARDS "as selected by US Journalists"
Plant Factory
- comments
Agriculture and health care will be fundamentally changed by technology over the next decade. Farmers will be pressed to produce more food, and achieve higher yields, to feed a growing global population. Likewise, health care providers will have to shift from caring for patients after they are sick to preventative care.
Fujitsu’s initiative to grow low potassium vegetables with the assistance of its Akisai cloud-based system is an example of many of the experiments we will see in the future. In Japan, approximately 13 million people suffer from chronic kidney disease and must restrict their potassium intake. By capitalizing on the low-potassium leaf lettuce cultivation techniques and knowledge of Aizufujikako Co., Ltd. and Akita Prefectural University, Fujitsu will be growing vegetables using ICT with reduced potassium content that are safe for kidney patients to eat. Akisai plays a crucial role in the process by precisely monitoring environmental factors such as carbon dioxide levels, moisture and illumination intensity to ensure the intended effect is achieved.
Fujitsu has began experimental production of low-potassium vegetables already, and will start mass production of leaf lettuce from January 2014 in a 2,000 square meter building in Aizu Wakamatsu that formerly served as a semiconductor clean room.
Besides helping patients, the system will provide farmers insights into a new generation of growing technologies. Soil depletion, fertilizer run-off and trade-offs between forests and farming are just some of the issues facing modern agriculture. Aizu Wakamatsu will demonstrate how agriculture can begin to shift more of their operations indoors. The initiative will also potentially demonstrate that cloud-based monitoring and indoor growing facilities can help increase harvests and thereby boost profitability and revenue.
Finally, we applaud Fujitsu’s creative recycling. Many chip manufacturers are currently sitting on empty fabrication facilities that are not adequate for producing advanced semiconductors. Because clean rooms are clean, they also happen to be an ideal environment for growing food.- Exhibit Information
- FUJITSU LIMITED
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