Bean Sprouts

A tour of Quansett Nurseries in Massachusetts this past weekend left me wondering about the possibilities of an agar or reusable nutrient gel medium for use in "sprout" production. Here goes.

The current method of edible sprout production at Quansett Nurseries uses a peat/perlite mix for germination. This is inefficient and - to use a much-hated buzzword - unsustainable. They either don't reuse the medium and therefore have a high initial cost and produce a large amount of waste medium constantly, or they do reuse it, adding the cost of steaming the medium to remove possible pathogens to their bill. Also, the medium does wear out through repeated uses. Depending on how much they spend on growing medium by initially buying it and repeatedly steaming it, research into an alternative medium especially for sprout production may be worthwhile.

I don't pretend to know the industry of sprouting as well as they do, but perhaps my fresh perspective has seen something they have not.

That said, here's the revolutionary plan: Grow in a soluble gel! An agar medium, a starch solution, whatever works and is reusable. My plan as of the moment is to sprout in something akin to the mixture used in tissue culture, without the Plant Growth Regulators. A pan would be filled with the stuff, seeds would be germinated on it, and the whole sprout (not just the shoot, but also the root) would be harvested by dissolving the medium. There is the question of the seed husks, but this would only matter on certain seeds which have large, inedible husks.

An issue that could arise would be the lack of oxygen to the roots of the seedling. To get a seed to germinate and grow fast, a good amount of oxygen needs to be available to the roots. The gel could be "fluffed" with oxygen as it is setting, resulting in a bubbly, solid mixture.

The beauty of this plan is in the harvest - getting the roots increases sprout bulk and value, recycling growing medium saves money and reduces waste.

Any thoughts?