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In the future, your plate may be graced with a 3D-printed carrot! Qatar students have devised an inventive solution to combat food insecurity.
You may already know about lab-grown meat produced using animal cells. 3D printing for objects and even food is also quite familiar. Now, a group of researchers has combined these cutting-edge technologies to create vegetables, particularly carrots.
This research project, led by two Carnegie Mellon University students in Doha, Qatar, was recently featured on Al-Jazeera. The key focus was on developing a printer capable of mass-producing vegetables. However, it’s important to note that food production using this method is still limited in terms of quantity.
For vegetables, purees have to be made to serve as the “raw material,” similar to how sheets of paper are loaded into a traditional printer. This means that conventional agriculture is still necessary, even though agricultural crops already occupy 38% of the world’s land surface, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
It’s worth considering the geographical context as well. The students conducted their research in Qatar, a country where only 2.5% of the total land can be used for farming. As a result, the country heavily relies on food imports.
The two Qatari students started by extracting cells from a carrot and then multiplying them under a microscope. The next step involved printing these cells.
“Our technology supports mass production because it utilizes ultraviolet light. Printing with ultraviolet light and resin has been done before, but applying it to edible materials is a first,” one of the inventors explained.
While we don’t know if this 3D-printed carrot tastes exactly like its conventionally grown counterpart, we do know that its nutritional value is equivalent.
So, why did the researchers choose a carrot for this prototype? Simply put, the carrot has been the subject of numerous stem cell studies.
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Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
