Growing fresh microgreens right in your own kitchen just became simple and environmentally-friendly thanks to the thinking of three Aucklanders who have created the Micropod.

On show at the Fieldays’ Innovation Centre, founders Brian Lai and Jeff Xu were fielding large amounts of enquiries about the Micropod – and ended up winning the Fieldays Innovation Origin Intellectual Property Awards.

The pair say they developed the Micropod with a biodegradable seed mat – which has 427 seeds and embodied nutrients.

The seeds are perfectly spaced to allow maximum yield and also eliminates issues with moulding, which is common in traditional microgreen set-ups.

Jeff had tried to grow his own microgreens but failed – then found there wasn’t many growing options on the shelves of retailers.

He got Brian to join him and develop their own – and with help from the Sprout Agritech Accelerator programme – the result is an indoor microgreens pods that can be grown in less than two weeks.

“It means people can grow their own microgreens regardless of whether they lack a garden, the space to grow vegetables or the time to tend to plants,” says Brian.

“And by growing microgreens in your Micropod at home you’re effectively reducing the price by cutting out the middle men involved when you buy them from the supermarket – plus you can guarantee they will be fresh.”

“Because you can cut them when you want to use them – they will not go limp or rotten in the fridge and be forgotten about.”

And they are simple to use – ‘growers’ just have to add water once to the Micropod tray before placing the seed mat and covering it with a dome, which helps the seeds to germinate. Growth is optimum if it is placed in a sunny location such as a windowsill.

Brian says the beauty of the Micropod is that it’s simple. “You water once and forget about it until they are ready to harvest.”

Plus the Micropod seed mat is the only patented fully compostable product of its kind in NZ – making the product environmentally sustainable.

Due the overwhelming success at Fieldays, Micropod is looking to have product to sell by the end of the year. To find out more, see: www.micropod.nz