Straight from the sterilized cleanroom of a semiconductor factory in northern Japan to the bowl of a fresh salad, IT giant Fujitsu Ltd. is hoping to make some cold, hard cash by making crisp, green lettuce.
Fujitsu, a name synonymous with supercomputers and not at all with growing vegetables, will begin taking online orders later this month for lettuce it harvested at its factory in Fukushima Prefecture.
Production of the leafy greens is tightly controlled so that they only have low levels of potassium, making them safe to eat raw even for people with medical conditions like kidney disease.
While each head costs more than double supermarket prices, the high-end lettuce “has a rich taste and can be enjoyed without any dressing,” said Mayumi Mogi, a spokeswoman at Fujitsu.
The unusual veggie project kicked off at Fujitsu in mid-2013 as an attempt to make the best use of a vacant, roughly 2,000 sq. m. cleanroom at the factory. Fujitsu’s cloud computing system was used to accumulate necessary data and determine the appropriate temperature, humidity, CO2 level, and amount of fertilizer.
The company chose not to hire agricultural experts but instead asked its team of semiconductor engineers to try their hand at growing lettuce. “Our engineers gave the same attention to the vegetable that they give to a semiconductor,” Mogi said. “Of course, they had to face brand-new challenges, including sterilizing the lettuce and adding fertilizer at the right moment.”
Sales of the product to some medical institutions and a limited number of stores began earlier this month. Ms. Mogi said that while a final decision is still pending, Fujitsu will likely expand the line of vegetables grown in the cleanroom to include komatusna spinach and sangchu Korean lettuce in the near future.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal
