What goes into our plate, and where it’s sourced from are two factors that have severely affected eating habits, ever since the pandemic compelled us to review our lifestyle. This, in turn, has led to a renewed interest in home gardening, with home-bound citizens trying their hand at sowing the seeds for clean eating. And thus, it’s no surprise that hydroponics — a soil-less method of planting — gardens have been in full bloom, with the likes of Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Bhumi Pednekar and Samantha Akkineni, among others, trying to their hands at it. To understand how this unconventional method of farming works, we reached out to Kharghar-based hydroponics expert Vijay Yelmalle, founder, Center for Research in Alternative Farming Technologies and director of Mystiq Garden.

What is hydroponics?

Yelmalle, a former chemical engineer, shares that in simple terms, hydroponics is the process of growing plants in water without any soil. In the absence of soil, certain nutrient-rich solutions, water and sunlight do the trick, yielding a produce that is pesticide-free, and consumes lesser water and space. “Hydroponics has a wide scope; the system can be installed across a few acres of greenhouses, or even as a vertical set-up in your kitchen or backyard,” he says.