Fujitsu harvests potassium-poor lettuce from the chip factory

The IT company Fujitsu has converted one of its factories into a greenhouse. A week ago, the subsidiary Fujitsu Home & Office Services Limited launched its products on the market for the first time. The plants are characterized by a particularly low potassium content and can be safely consumed even by dialysis patients.

The salad is grown in a multi-story cultivation in the same sterile cleanroom environment where silicon chips were once manufactured. This gives Fujitsu complete control over even the smallest particles and microorganisms in the air. Sensors along the plant rows monitor all aspects of production and send measurement data such as temperature or soil moisture to a cloud-based IT system. This system uses the data to perfectly adjust the weather conditions and fertilizer application in the greenhouse to the current needs of the plants, ensuring optimal growth conditions and the best possible harvest. The cultivation is therefore possible under optimal conditions and without the use of any chemicals.

The plant factory is part of the research project "Kirei Yasai" ("Clean Vegetables") by Fujitsu. Thanks to the cleanroom conditions, the salad has a potassium content of only 100 milligrams per 100 grams – significantly less than the usual amount of 490 milligrams. Therefore, even people with chronic kidney disease and dialysis patients can eat the greens raw without risk. With a nitrate content of only about 75 milligrams per 100 grams, the salad is also less bitter and thus much more attractive to children. No pesticides are used for cultivation, and thanks to the germ-free environment, the salad remains fresh for about two weeks when stored at 10 degrees Celsius.

"Our high-quality salad has a full-bodied taste and is very tasty even without dressing," says Mayumi Mogi, spokesperson for Fujitsu. However, this comes at a price: at approximately 3.59 euros per 90 grams (500 Yen), the vegetables are almost twice as expensive as comparable products in a Japanese supermarket. Due to the particularly efficient use of space in the multi-story cultivation, the project is not only interesting from a medical perspective – given the growing world population and limited arable land, it could contribute to solving the increasing demand for agricultural land. The salad has already been sold to some medical institutes and a limited number of stores.