Nanobubble, technology is rapidly emerging as a next-generation tool for precision agriculture. Generating significant market value in other industry sectors, its use in agriculture delivers new possibilities for improved fertilizer performance, resulting in greater profitability and sustainability.
Nanobubbles are tiny bubbles, invisible to the naked eye and 2,500 times smaller than a single grain of table salt. Bubbles at this scale remain suspended in water for long periods, enabling highly efficient oxygen transfer and supersaturation of dissolved gas in liquids.
California-based Moleaer owns technology that injects oxygen nanobubbles into irrigation water to deliver efficiency in oxygen transfer: more oxygen near the root zone increases nutrient absorption and plant resistance to environmental stress.
“An oxygen-enriched root zone improves root mass, increases uptake of key nutrients like calcium and potassium, and helps suppress pathogenic growth,” notes Nick Dyner, Moleaer CEO, in an interview with New AG International. “The technology also reduces biofilm, source water algae and pathogens such as Pythium and Phytophthora to optimize plant health and growth.”
Moleaer’s technology involves patented nanobubble generators that were designed and built using the company’s engineering team’s experience with agricultural applications. Dyner says they’re easy to integrate, install and maintain, without the need to overhaul an irrigation system.
“We’ve developed our solutions hand in hand with innovative farmers and horticulturalists around the world, from California to South America, to the Netherlands, and have proven their efficacy on everything from avocados to tomatoes,” says Dyner.
Recently, a southern U.S. company decided to try nanobubbles in its fertilizer products, with great success.
RainAG partnered with Moleaer to market new nanobubble-infused fertilizers combining Moleaer’s nanobubble technology with RainAG’s patent-pending Rain Technology. The new RainAG nanobubble-infused fertilizers have been trialed and utilized across a range of commodity crops including corn, cotton, wheat and sugarcane, fruit and vegetable crops, and on turf and silviculture.
In an interview with New AG International, Tim Ford, RainAG general manager and part owner notes that Rain Technology offers a revolutionary step change and disruptive economic benefit for growers.
“We know that plants need oxygen in the soil profile, so one of our founders initiated in-house research using the (Moleaer) units to nanobubble the fertilizer solutions and then make the applications – that’s where it all started,” he says. “We see benefit not just from a soil-applied or an injection via irrigation, but even from a foliar applied benefit with the nanobubbles.”
Ford says the nanobubble enhanced RainAG fertilizers have significant benefits, including increased crop yields by up to 16 percent in corn and 12 percent in cotton; increased crop profitability by more than $5,100 per acre of tomatoes; increased crop marketability by more than 110 percent in strawberries; reduction in fertilizer utilization; and reduction in off-target nutrient runoff and groundwater leaching.
“We see that across the board,” notes Ford. “We have data on tomatoes where we had a 30 percent increase in yield; we’ve seen 12 percent increase in cotton lint
where nanobubbling is used alone; in carrots we had an 18 percent increase in number ones which is the most marketable carrot, and a 20 percent reduction in off-grade carrots. We’ve seen it on all the crops we’ve tested so far, and we’ve tested quite a few.”
RainAG has expanded its testing to seed treatments, “and we’ve seen benefit with that,” says Ford. “We also now have some new exciting revelations around treating dry fertilizer, where we’re sparging the nanobubble liquid onto dry fertilizer, and we’re seeing an increased benefit of adding that to the fertilizer.
“We also have some ongoing studies in that realm to determine how much fertilizer could the grower potentially reduce and not impact the yield. Because we do increase the yield when we sparge the dry as well.”
Ford adds that when combining Moleaer’s nanobubble technology with RainAG fertilizers, farmers are able to reduce operational costs, reduce risks from crop loss, and reduce the environmental impacts to local water sources from increased phosphorus and nitrogen levels.
Moleaer has deployed more than 1,000 nanobubble generators worldwide since 2016 for use in various industries. Using one of these generators, RainAG takes fertilizer from one tank, pumps it through the Moleaer unit, and then pumps the resulting nanobubble solution into another tank where it can stay for a significant period of time.
According to Ford, dry fertilizers treated with RainAG liquid nanobubble technology has a fast-drying process that eliminates issues such as clumping. Rain Technology allows farmers to readily store their dry fertilizer up to the time of blending – and go to the field without any worries.
“Applying nanobubble technology to liquid fertilizer provides an extended shelf life – which gives growers more flexibility in application timing,” he notes. “We’ve tested it out to 16 months and these nanobubbles will attach and stay involved in the solution for up to a year. We’ve tested product outside of a year and still had above the limit of what we looked for as far as dissolved oxygen.”
RainAG has established their nanobubble-infused fertilizer sales in seven U.S. states to date, and they continue with ongoing testing.
“We have trials set up in many parts of the U.S. with additional testing planned in winter vegetable growing
areas later this year,” says Ford, adding that moving forward, RainAG looks to expand its footprint across more crop sectors in the U.S., plus Canada and other international markets.
“There are no barriers with regard to product labelling or anything like that; this is a mechanical application to the fertilizer, so the technology actually elevates the overall performance of the fertilizer, making it better and of greater value to the grower.” ●
Tim Ford, General Manager, RainAG,
Nick Dyner, Moleaer
The 9th Symposium on Mineral Nutrition of Fruit Crops took place June 28-30, 2021 and was carried out over a virtual platform. It hosted 220 participants, from 35 countries, and included seven invited keynote lectures, 73 contributed oral presentations and 44 posters, presented by scientists from 24 countries.
There were 14 sessions, focused on the following aspects of crop nutrition, including The importance of calcium; Nutrients uptake; Diagnostic methods; New fertilizers and application methods; Abiotic stresses; Cultivar-rootstock effects; Interactions with microorganisms; Environment; Almond; Avocado; Berries; Citrus; Grapevine; Fruit quality; Human health and nutrition; and, Nutrition from organic sources. (Additional information can be found at the symposium's website at https://program.eventact.com/Program/iXn0/ixTQ/en.)
The keynote presentation was given by Prof. Lee Kalcsits, from Washington State University, U.S., and titled "Recent advances in methods for measuring nutrient uptake, distribution, and localization in perennial fruit crops."
Nutrient uptake by a plant's organs and the distribution between them, especially by the developing fruits, are critical for ensuring the production of high yields and optimal internal and external fruit quality. Physiological disorders arising from unbalanced nutrients uptake and/or their sub-optimal distribution can result in reduced productivity and economic losses.
One of the major hurdles often encountered in the research of perennial plants is that under field conditions, there exist large pools of nutrients that are recycled within the tree, and between the soil and the tree. So, tracking the critical fluxes of central nutrients into the fruit, throughout its development processes, are of prime importance, because even small variations in
bulk nutrient composition can translate into large differences in productivity and fruit quality. Therefore, under field environments, and classic investigation methods, very large numbers of measurements are often required, to increase confidence in small differences that are frequently detected.
However, Kalcsits' current message is that implementing cutting-edge techniques can be used with a high degree of confidence in detecting important bottlenecks in nutrients' supply chain within the plant, across time and space. The following techniques have been used in Kalcsits' experiments with apple trees, (cv. Honeycrisp). 1) Synchrotron devices, based on x-ray diffraction (XRD) and a hand-held X-ray fluorescence device. 2) Micro-CT (computed tomography) imaging. 3) Stable isotopes and analogue tracers that help in differentiating between pre-existing nutrient pools, and newly acquired nutrients. These non-destructive, high through-put accurate measurements of cell structures, nutrients distribution, proteins crystallography, and more, enabled us to measure micro-scale nutrients' differences, spatial distributions of potassium and calcium, associated with differences in cellular structure, porosity, and cell volume in bitterpit-affected apple fruits. The following are several accomplishments that were realized thanks to the above-mentioned methods, according to Kalcsits:
Spatial variations across the tree, of the contents of potassium and calcium in apple fruits, measured by a portable X-ray fluorescence device. Thanks to the rapid detection procedure, some 1,300 fruits from
nine plantations could be checked quickly, for their K and Ca contents. A clear pattern became obvious, i.e., the higher the fruit in the tree, the lower its potassium content, and the higher (+60-70 percent) its calcium content. This serves as a logical explanation to the well-known phenomenon that bitterpit incidence is remarkably higher in the lower parts of Honeycrisp apple trees.
The afore-mentioned methods of determining the actual K:Ca ratio across a certain plantation plot can serve also as a meaningful indicator for assessing the expected crop load of that plot, because high bitterpit incidence is significantly positively associated with low crop load.
Is has been found by CT-imaging of a whole fruit, that the relatively poor vascular system within a Honeycrisp apple fruit is the main reason for the very low calcium concentration in the blossom-end of the fruits (see Photo 1). This phenomenon resembles the well-known blossom end-rot found in Solanaceous vegetables.
Isotopes and analogues are potent tools for distinguishing between newly acquired nutrients and pre-existing pools. So, using these tools is very instrumental in measuring uptake and distribution of nutrients within the tree, or within a certain organ, like fruits or leaves. N15 and N13 are stable and radioactive, respectively, nitrogen isotopes. K41 is a stable K isotope. Ca44 and Ca45, are stable and radioactive, respectively, calcium isotopes. Similarly, strontium (Sr) can serve as a Ca analogue, while rubidium (Rb) can serve as a potassium analogue.
Ca40 is the dominant (~97 percent) calcium form in nature, while Ca44, is a stable isotope, occurring
naturally at ~2.1 percent, making it an ideal Ca tracer. Application of this tool in measuring the efficiency of foliarly applied CaCl2 to an apple plantation led to the following striking finding: only ~one percent of the calcium, applied foliarly to the orchard, is found in the fruits' cortex at harvest time. This figure means that foliar application of 15 kg/ha of actual calcium, ends up with merely 150 g/ha that are finally found in the fruits at harvest time. So, such treatment cannot solve calcium deficiency of the crop. Up to five-fold higher absorption rates of calcium into the fruit cortex were obtained when fruit-surface temperature was
<25C, compared to >35C, thanks to increased drying time of the spray solution.
In conclusion, the imaging methods mentioned above markedly increase the resolution of the results, increasing meaningful data-to-noise ratio, enhancing in-vivo quantification of real-time dynamics of spatial tissue nutrient concentrations. They, thereby, enable increasing the number of replications, making the results more statistically significant, and providing new opportunities for research in mineral nutrition of fruit crops, according to Kalcsits. ●
Extreme differences in K/Ca ratio in the rind of a Honeycrisp apple.
Relatively denser vascular system in the stem-end of the fruit, displayed in a CT-imaging of a whole apple fruit.
Prof. Lee Kalcsits, with Washington State University, U.S.
