STAFF REPORT KHI: By growing tomatoes and lettuce using 80 per cent less water than usual, two business students may have come up with a solution to farming in drought-stricken areas of Pakistan.


This unique hydro-farming project started off as an assignment for a Developing Entrepreneurship Options class that 22-year-old, Yousuf Huzefa Motiwala and Ibrahim Y Petiwala, came up with while they were BBA students at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA).


“When the farmer waters the field, he ends up watering the empty distance in between and that wastes water,” he said. “Hydro farming is a clean system where plants grow without soil.”


Petiwala said a lot of water can be saved if such farming is practiced in places, such as Thar. “Farming can be done by making small reservoirs of water that can keep recycling and watering the plants,” he said. The two young men built their greenhouse in North Nazimabad nearly four months ago which has a capacity to hold up to 125 plants and can produce up to 2,600 kilograms of vegetation.


The idea to build a hydro farm started with the help of an agriculturist friend who helped them with the initial prototype, Motiwala explained. Then they carried out extensive research on hydro farming and tweaked their findings to Pakistan.

By Web Team

Technology Times Web team handles all matters relevant to website posting and management.