UAE-based indoor farming system grows plants with 98% less water, no soil

After NASA discarded research related to using fogponics technology, a team at a UAE-based startup in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada revived the idea and turned it to an indoors planting system. Instead of relying on water to sustain the plants, fogponics uses “98 per cent less water than traditional farming,” Alberto Aguilar, co-founder and CEO of Plantaform, told Khaleej Times.

By placing a plant “pod” inside this planting incubator, much like coffee capsules inside a coffee machine, fine mist (or fog, hence the name fogponics) releases from a fog generator, along with a mixture of water and nutrients.

This award-winning technology doesn’t use soil, and can grow 15 types of plants at a time. The machine needs a water refill only every three weeks, and the plant pods themselves can be replaced every four months, with plants regrown inside the same pods.

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“In a place like the UAE or the GCC where water is scarce, this (technology) is very important because you're conserving the water that you should not waste. But it also grows a lot faster,” Aguilar explained. According to Plantaform, the plants are ready to be harvested in three weeks, whereas traditional farming takes up to a few months, depending on the crop.

Setup in 5 minutes, harvest in 3 weeks

The incubator has to be plugged in to a power outlet, with its underbelly filled with water. The plant pods offered by Plantaform, which include a seed and are soilless, are then inserted into the holes.

Plants that can be grown include leafy greens, herbs, certain vegetables, and even edible flowers. The Plantaform App then monitors the plants throughout its entire lifecycle and notifies the user when they are ready to be harvested, usually in three weeks’ time. 

Plantaform was showcasing its planting system at Gulfood 2026, the world’s biggest food show event. Although the innovation was started in Canada, Aguilar later moved the startup’s operations to the UAE, where he has a personal connection to the country. “I grew up in Dubai throughout my teenage years,” he said, where he came up with the idea of producing the fogponics planting system.

Originally from Spain, Aguilar said he missed the taste of organic food that he used to eat in his homeland. “When I moved to Dubai, everything was fantastic. Everything was perfect,” he said.

“I wanted to find a solution to be able to provide food independency to the whole country but make people part of the solution to importing less food and becoming more food independent,” he added.