TIME has picked its choices for best inventions of 2009. Those that got the votes range from best new gadgets to best new breakthrough ideas of the year. Here are some:

The breeding population of the highly migratory southern bluefin tuna has dipped to more than 90 percent since the 1950s. It seemed that the southern bluefin tuna, prized for its ‘buttery sashimi meat,’ will no longer spawn. Then, ‘in Port Lincoln, Australia, a tankful of bluefin tuna began to spawn in landlocked tanks.’ Now, there’s hope for bluefin aquaculture and the tank-bred tuna.

Philips Electronics ‘became the first to enter the U.S. Department of Energy’s L Prize competition, which seeks a LED alternative to the common 60-watt bulb.’ The 60-watt lights occupy half of the entire domestic incandescent market. The challenge is to replace the said bulb with LED bulbs. If this could be done, ‘the U.S. could save enough electricity per year to light 17.4 million households.’ Philips claims a cash award and federal purchasing agreements worth about $10 million. ‘Philips’ LED bulb emits the same amount of light as its incandescent equivalent but uses less than 10 watts and lasts for 25,000 hours — or 25 times as long.’

The Herschel Space Observatory now has the telescope for invisible stars. It ‘scans the skies in the infrared spectrum. In order to avoid infrared interference and temperature fluctuations from Earth, it hovers in space at the second Lagrange point, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away, where the gravity of the Earth and sun balance out.’

World food shortage and shortfall in world food production may now be addressed with the invention of vertical farming. ‘Valcent, a company based in El Paso, Texas, is pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming. But best of all, by growing upward instead of outward, vertical farming can expand food supplies without using more land.’

Via TIME