
Dutch team is pioneering development of crops fed by sea water - aaron695
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/18/humble-potato-poised-to-launch-food-revolution
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vanderZwan
> _Inspired by sea cabbage, 59-year-old Marc van Rijsselberghe set up Salt
> Farm Texel and teamed up with the Free University in Amsterdam, which sent
> him de Vos to look at the possibility of growing food using non-fresh water.
> Their non-GM, non-laboratory-based experiments had help from an elderly
> Dutch farmer who has a geekish knowledge of thousands of different potato
> varieties._

This is great. I'm not anti-GM, but let's be honest: traditionally grown
vegetables have a much better marketing position. Being aided by a wise old
farmer is an even better narrative.

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cjensen
Nice idea, but what about the Elephant in the Room? How do you eliminate the
buildup of salt in the soil which can ruin the farmland?

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thret
"So nine times out of ten the salt is retained in the leaves of the plant, so
you’d have to eat many many kilos of potatoes before you’d exceed your
recommended salt intake. But some of the salads are heavy with salt"

Then how are the leaves disposed of, I do not know. Fed to pigs or burnt
perhaps, if they were simply used as mulch you would still wind up with a
buildup of salt in the soil.

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delinka
Burning leaves a pile of salt. I, too, am curious where they expect the salt
to disappear to.

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thisGuysAccount
If you burn it, and have a pile of salt, it might be possible to remove the
ash and keep the salt.

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Sebpereira
There are very few species that have a high tolerance of salt, thus the idea,
although good, has a limited range of uses. If you wanted to transfer the salt
resistance of a potato to a lettuce you would need to use DNA splicing, making
it a GMO. Also, it is true that most of the salt is retain on the leaf, but a
good portion remains on the soil as small crystals, accelerating erosion of
the field.

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_sakura
My parents visited his farm a few months ago, and told me that the potatoes
don't taste salty at all. "Just like normal potatoes," they said, "they needed
a little bit of salt added after baking for the taste." I'm hoping to visit it
myself, if I have the opportunity next spring/summer. It's quite a spectacular
start of rethinking food, imho.

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w1ntermute
Wouldn't it make more sense to just improve desalination efficiency? This sort
of biological engineering is a lot more difficult and has a lot more
ecosystem-wide effects than improving desalination would.

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bjelkeman-again
Increased salinity of soils is a big issue anywhere where groundwater is used
for irrigation and there isn't much rain. Literally hundreds of millions of
hectares are affected. [1]

We are probably going to have to attack the problem on many fronts
simultaneously. If we could get efficient solar powered desalination, or
something based on nano materials, that would be great [2], the current RO
process is fairly energy intensive.

But you still have to deal with brine, and that is hard unless you are close
to the sea. And if you are close to the sea and in a hot area, I'd personally
go with Seawater Greenhouse technology instead. It has many side benefits,
albeit probably not suitable for staple crops. [3]

[1]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_salinity#Salinity_due_to...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_salinity#Salinity_due_to_irrigation)
[2] [http://www.kurzweilai.net/selective-nanopores-in-graphene-
dr...](http://www.kurzweilai.net/selective-nanopores-in-graphene-dramatically-
improve-desalination-and-purification) [3]
[http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com](http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com)

