Nemo's Garden: Growing plants underwater

After the positive experiences collected in the period 2012-2015, Nemo's Garden Project has been started again in 2016 trying to improve the knowledge not only about the engineering and installation underwater of structures dedicated to the growth of vegetables for human consumption, but also about the physical-chemical-biological processes occurring during the plants development under sea. The project goal is to create alternative ways of agriculture, especially dedicated to those areas where environmental conditions make the plants growth extremely difficult if the conventional farming would be applied. Regions where both lack of fresh water and fertile soils and extreme temperature changes occur may be interested in. Technology developed in the framework of Nemo's Garden Project might help to create efficient plants productions in an alternative and economical way in respect to standard greenhouses, looking at the new branches of green and blue economy. Nemo's Garden Project may be described with three keywords: Eco-friendly: the underwater farm determines very minimal harms to the marine environment and related ecosystems; Self-sustainable: the underwater agriculture represents an alternative solution to the existing methods (sustainability). The use of renewable energy, the resource saving, the fresh water creation and its possible reutilization make Nemo's Garden as a self-sustainable system. Indeed, once the crop system has been activated by using fresh water obtained by desalination of seawater, it continues to sustain itself without any external support; Ecological: no pollution and no damage in the seawater occur. Inside each underwater farm an efficient ecosystem, composed of dynamically interacting parts including organisms (plants) and non-living components of their environment, is developed. Preliminary analyses performed on basil and salad growth underwater demonstrated that the whole content of essential oils is not far from that of terrestrial plants; again, taste and appearance of the specimens showed no differences.