Growth response and yield quality of broccoli microgreen (Brassica oleracea var. Italica Planck) to LEDs irradiance duration and types of nutrients

Abstract

Microgreens are young plants harvested at the age of 7-21 days. Various edible plants can be cultivated into microgreen, one of which is broccoli. The purpose of this study was obtaining the appropriate irradiance duration and types of nutrients for broccoli microgreen growth. The research was conducted at Microgreen Farm, Sidakarya, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia from January to February 2023. This experiment used split plot Randomized Block Design (RBD) consisting of 2 factors and 3 replications. The first factor was the irradiance duration consisting of 3 levels, namely L1=14 hours/day, L2=17 hours/day, L3=20 hours/day. The second factor was the types of nutrients, namely: Nk=control/without nutrition, Na=AB mix 1000 ppm, Nc=eggshells powder. The result revealed that the interaction between the irradiance duration and the types of nutrients had no significant effect on the growth and yield quality of broccoli microgreen. L1 gave the highest results on the length of the microgreen stem (7.19 cm) or an increase of 19% and significantly different from the lowest results obtained at the irradiance duration of 20 hours/day (6.04 cm). The Na treatment significantly increased growth and yield quality components as indicated by variables of microgreen fresh weight per container (10,75 g), microgreen fresh weight per plant (106,09 mg), microgreen stem length (8,25 cm), percentage of harvested plants (46,90%), color (3,67), and crispness (3,37) compared to Nk which were 4,32 g, 49,55 mg, 5,23 cm, 40,55%, 3,24, 2,73, respectively.