EFFECT OF CHANNEL DEPTH ON YIELD OF SWEET POTATOES GROWN HYDROPONICALLY

Abstract

The potential of the sweet potato as a food source for future long-term manned space missions is being evaluated for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) Program. Several experiments have shown that the sweet potato can be grown hydroponically. However, an evaluation of the NASA fan-shaped Biomass Production Chamber (BPC) channel was initiated to determine if channel depths influenced the yield of hydroponically grownsweet potatoes. Three channel depths were studied, 5 cm (2 in) standard NASA BPC channel, 10 cm (4 in) channel and 15 cm (6 in) channel. The experiment consisted of one replication. The results show that channel depth does effect the yield of storage roots. The 15 cm depth channel provided the most consistent yield with all channels having significantly different fresh storage root yields in the replicate.