This New Home Appliance Could Grow Local Food in Your Own Kitchen

Ever imagine growing and harvesting your own food in the comforts of your own kitchen? Now, scientists from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. has created the first-ever 3D-printed CellPod prototype that could grow and produce local grown food for a healthy meal.

VTT describes this new technology as the first ever CellPod prototype that revolutionizes cell culture and microorganism through modern biotechnology. The device acts like a plant incubator that looks like a design lamp and could be conveniently place on a kitchen table,

Rather than growing a whole plant, the CellPod only grows undifferentiated cells of the plant, i.e., the best parts of the plant. The said undifferentiated cells has contains the entire genetic potential of the whole plant, which means that food grown via the CellPod also contains the healthy compounds foind in the plant as a whole.

Read: Pressing Mars Issue: How Will Humans Grow Food on the Red Planet?

The VTT has grown Arctic bramble cells, cloudberry cells and stone bramble cells. Scientists say that the taste of the VTT-grown food still needs a bit of tweaking as it's still "very mild and neutral." Results showed that the nutritional value of the food grown in the CellPod is sometimes greater than its naturally grown counterpart, as the case of the cloudberries. The said plant incubator could yield a harvest in just a week.

"Urbanisation and the environmental burden caused by agriculture are creating the need to develop new ways of producing food - CellPod is one of them. It may soon offer consumers a new and exciting way of producing local food in their own homes," says Lauri Reuter, VTT research scientist via Science Daily.

The VTT also aims to revolutionize food production and to collaborate with consumers to develop product ideas.

What do you think of the VTT? To learn more about urban gardening, check out the video below.