A revolutionising technology called InnoGro—a super-absorbent hydrogel derived from soy that can drastically improve agricultural yields—has been developed by NuSoil, a deep-tech start-up launched in 2019 and supported by the NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme.

Against the backdrop of a global water crisis, this technology has the potential to become a valuable addition to existing irrigation systems, such as sprinklers and drip systems by optimising water usage for agriculture.

Currently, as much as 72 per cent of the earth’s fresh water supplies are being used for agriculture. However, a substantial fraction of this is lost through evaporation, leaching or percolation into soil layers too deep for plants to absorb.

InnoGro—the brain-child of Dr Tan Wee Kee and Dr Zhu Jingling from NUS Environmental Research Institute (NERI)—promises to tackle this problem with its unique capability of absorbing water hundreds of times its dry weight, swelling to more than 150 times its size. When added to soil, it acts like mini-reservoirs, retaining most of the irrigated water within the reach of plants for long durations.

“Hydrogels are not new,” highlighted Tan, who is currently a senior research fellow with NERI and the co-founder and CEO of NuSoil. However, unlike most hydrogels that are petroleum-based, InnoGro is a sustainable, plant-based product. Made from okara, the Japanese term for the soy pulp created as a by-product from soy milk and beancurd production, InnoGro is superior to other organic hydrogels in the market due to its incredible waste-to-resource conversion potential, shared Tan, who believes it could be a game-changing tool for the agricultural industry.

 
InnoGro as the next big agricultural tool

“My role has been in demonstrating and defining how this okara-derived hydrogel can enhance the growth of plants, and be applied in various agricultural set-ups,” explained Tan, who found that adding InnoGro to plants grown in water-scarce environments drastically enhanced the growth of leafy vegetables. From seedling to harvest stage, shoot weight increased 113 per cent, total leaf area 57 per cent, and the relative growth rate shot up 50 per cent.

Given the huge quantities of okara derived from the extensive range of soy food produced globally, Tan’s team is focused on ramping up production and bringing InnoGro to the global market.

“We were awarded a grant from Enterprise Singapore to do more field trials to obtain proof of concept. The next stage is to send more samples for people around the world to try InnoGro,” shared Tan.

And she has high hopes for the technology developed at NuSoil: “Perhaps one day we might be able to bring this technology to outer space — and our astronauts might even be able to harvest food. It would probably be a very costly exercise, but one can always dream!”

Adapted by Sruthi Jagannathan from An idea that holds water