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New aquaponics system brings healthy food to local areas

The creators of the aquaphonics system at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management aim to feed the minds and stomachs of local communities.  Courtesy Photo/ The Daily Cougar

The creators of the aquaponics system at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management aim to feed the minds and stomachs of local communities. |  Courtesy of the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management/ The Daily Cougar

The Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management has developed an innovative farming system that will help students study food safety as well as grow produce to be donated to the local community.

The aquaponics system will grow approximately 75 pounds of produce – squash, lettuce and herbs – to be given to area organizations. Details are still to be finalized.

“We’d like to use this as a model to supplement food deserts in urban environments, places that are without steady sources of nutrition,” said Jay Neal, assistant professor at the Hilton College and one of the professors responsible for the project. “This is an immediate need and something we can do for our community.”

Some of the main objectives of this project are education and research.

“That goal is to make high school students aware of career opportunities in science and agriculture that are non-traditional,” Neal said. “A lot of people don’t want to farm because it’s hard work. It’s originally why their families moved away from it. At the same time, a lot of people want to have science careers. There are other career opportunities you can go through with a science degree.”

The practice consists of using fish to produce nitrogen which is then used to feed plants, Neal said.

Even though aquaponics has been around for roughly 30 years in areas where farmland is scarce, primarily in Japan, the technique is steadily making its way into the U.S., he said.

Neal and research assistant professor at the Hilton College Sujata Sirsat are responsible for the project in collaboration with the agricultural department at the Houston Community College – Katy.

The UH aquaponics system is a 600-gallon water tank that houses more than 200 tilapia and is built in a 15-by-25-foot laboratory. Its water will first flow through a PVC pipe over clay pellets into a floating squash garden, and then it will be drained into a second garden of lettuce and herbs. The root systems clean the water, which is filtered back into the fish tank.

The produce yielded is free of chemicals and growth hormones, and the practice is 100 percent sustainable, Neal and Sirsat said.

“It’s a completely closed system,” Neal said. “The water is completely replenished and recycled.”

By building it indoors, the researchers are proposing that this is a practice appropriate for an urban setting, which could pose a solution for urban deserts.

Neal will use the aquaponics system to study the incidence of contaminates on produce from these gardens compared to produce from farmers’ markets and supermarkets.

“Certainly, there is bacteria everywhere, but we have found that with an aquaponics system, the microbial load is very limited,” he said.

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