âSee-Through Soil Could Help Farmers Deal With Future Droughts
In research that may eventually help crops survive drought, scientists at Princeton University have uncovered a key reason that mixing material called hydrogels with soil has sometimes proven disappointing for farmers.
Hydrogel beads, tiny plastic blobs that can absorb a thousand times their weight in water, seem ideally suited to serve as tiny underground reservoirs of water. In theory, as the soil dries, hydrogels release water to hydrate plants’ roots, thus alleviating droughts, conserving water and boosting crop yields.
Yet mixing hydrogels into farmers’ fields has had spotty results. Scientists have struggled to explain these uneven performances in large part because soil being opaque has thwarted attempts at observing, analyzing and ultimately improving hydrogel behaviors.
Adam Hadhazy, Office of Engineering Communications
Feb. 18, 2021 12:59 p.m.
Princeton researchers used tiny glass beads as a substitute for soil, so they could observe the behavior of hydrogels tiny plastic blobs that can absorb a thousand times their weight in water whose success in agriculture has been puzzlingly uneven. The researchers used a chemical that compensated for the distortion caused by the round beads, resulting in a perfectly clear view of the hydrogel.
Photo by the Datta Lab, Princeton University
In research that may eventually help crops survive drought, scientists at Princeton University have uncovered a key reason that mixing material called hydrogels with soil has sometimes proven disappointing for farmers.