Rohan Rege | Fabacademy

Rohan Rege

Fab Lab Zero
Vigyan Ashram

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It will tell us the most optimized way to grow azolla. In my final project, I plan to optimize the way we grow azolla here in Vigyan Ashram. Azolla, azolla pinnta lives in a symbiotic relationship with anabaena. They are traditionally being used as fertilizers. I believe there is more to the azolla than just bio fertilizers. Azolla has high amount of Nitrogen present. This can be used as a supplementary / primary food for animals.
It has been observed that cows produce more milk when their diet has azolla present. Also it can be used in poultry. Eggs collected from poultry are basically just proteins, which are nitrogen compounds. Azolla is also majority nitrogen. It could work and in initials trials at Vigyan Ashram the chickens love it. Although excess azolla causes dysentery. It could be due to high water content of azolla (~90%).
The next area it would be useful is high density fish farming. We have tried introducing azolla a primary source in aquaponics system in Vigyan Ashram. The fish, Grass carp (ctenopharyngodon idella) which was being cultivated at that time seemed to like it a lot. At one time we had a shortage of azolla. Azolla is also cheaper then regular fishfeed.
So basically if this works, We might be able to improve and increase the proteins by making them cheap.

Traditionally, azoola is cultivated in paddy fields along as a biofertilizer. They grow on the water logged rice fields and help in nitrogen fixation. This helps to boost production of rice.
Primary work was done by Dr. kamalasannan Pillai. He setup an innovative way to cultivate azolla for farmers to improve the soil nitrogen content. He is also called the the azolla man of India.
The people of 'The Azolla Foundation' have also well documented the way of cultivating azolla. They have proposed ways to grow azolla on their website. Although we are trying it here in ashram, we don't the yield they have mentioned.

The big picture, I would like to design is a complete end to end solution from azolla growth to cultivation and utilization. It would include water beds for growing azolla, intelligent system to harvest required amount of azolla each day. Also system to utilize the cultivated azolla.
To design such a system, I would need first find a system that will utlize my azolla. This is not easy, Here have tried with poultry, but feeding wet azolla (although they eat it greedily) causes dysentery. They do not eat dried azolla.
Cows do not eat wet azolla, neither do goats. Cows do eat azolla if it has been dried. Azolla is ~90% water. Feeding azolla dried will take lot of energy also weight of azolla will decrease substantially. Hence it not very economical
Currently we looking at using it as fish feed for grass carp. In our initial tests we found that grass carp liked zaolla a lot. Also growth of grass carp when feeding azolla is quite good too. By feeding azolla to the fish we are also indirectly refilling the water in the pond. The whole system looks very good. As as per my initial tests, azolla grows very fast in water from the aquaponics tank.
In the academy, I would like to make a simple testing apparatus that will help me find the optimal growing conditions for azolla. I can then document these and scale them up from a simple test bed of 1ft by 2ft to something like 10ft by 10 ft.

Except for Plastic trays and motors, almost everything will is made locally in Fablab.

Total: 2960RS

How much optimization is too much. How easy will it be able to scale on large scale.
Will the small systems work with same efficiencies after larger scale implementation or will it require to change the system.

Evaluation depends on whether I can perform tests on azolla with current setup, It think is necessary to understand that I'm making an apparatus as a (R&D) project. Experiments conducted on the apparatus can be successful or can fail. I might not be able to optimize azolla production with my first set of trials.