Comparison of Lactuca sativa growth performance in conventional and RAS-based hydroponic systems

Simon Goddek,Tycho Vermeulen

doi:10.1007/s10499-018-0293-8

Simon Goddek, Tycho Vermeulen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-018-0293-8

Copy DOI

Journal: Aquaculture International	Publication Date: Aug 10, 2018
Citations: 35	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Wageningen University & Research

Abstract

A recent study related to aquaponics has shown that hydroponic lettuce grown in aquaculture-derived supplemented water grew significantly better than lettuce grown in a conventional hydroponic system. The principal objective of this study was to verify this finding in a larger setup. Even though the aquaculture water that was added to the aquaculture-based hydroponic system contained relatively high amounts of sodium, we were still able to observe an enhanced growth performance of the lettuce in that system compared to the lettuce grown in the conventional hydroponic nutrient solution. The lettuce final fresh weight was 7.9%, and its final dry weight even 33.2% higher than the one of the hydroponic control.

Highlights

Aquaponics has received broad attention in both the civil society and the scientific community
The nutrient concentrations of the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) water and the respective systems can be seen in Tables 1 and 2
What attracts attention is that the difference in sodium concentrations is significant (Table 1, Fig. 3)

Summary

Introduction

Aquaponics has received broad attention in both the civil society and the scientific community. Its lack of the ability to provide optimal conditions for both fish and plants is most likely the main reason why it is currently mainly being used for educational purposes (Villarroel et al 2016). This is because one-loop aquaponic systems currently cannot compete with yields found in conventional hydroponic systems (Delaide et al 2016). Kloas et al (2015) and Goddek et al (2016) both showed that nutrient concentrations in one-loop systems are suboptimal and suggest to focus on so-called decoupled multi-loop systems to allow optimal conditions (i.e. in nutrient concentrations, temperature, pH, etc.) for both fish and plants. This paper will primarily focus on such multi-loop aquaponic systems

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion