Lect4-Water Culture System
Lect4-Water Culture System
Lect4-Water Culture System
arrangement,
▪ delivery piping Catchment tank
▪ control system.
▪ NFT system invented in the
temperate region uses gullies
made from aluminium , polythene,
ABS (acrolonitrile butadiene
streyne), rigid PVC with the surface
covered with polythene plastic.
▪ → enable conservation of heat for
production during cooler season.
▪ In the tropics, Lim (1986) materials used as
gully in the temperate were not suitable for
use owing to overheating at prevailing
temperature.
▪ a NFT trough system whereby the trough or
gully was made from wood and covered with
polystrene. The main purpose - to minimize
increase in high temperature for the nutrient
solution.
▪ The system developed at the Universiti of
Putra Malaysia (UPM) has well adopted by
local growers and proved satisfactorily for
cultivation of many horticultural crops.
Some useful characteristic of NFT system can be
summarised as follows;
Advantages
1. Leafy vegetables- many plants can
accommodate per unit of floor area
2. Use for rooting of foliage plant cuttings-
while shipping (export regulation – no soil)
FLOATING/STAGNANT HYDROPONICS
•Low coat hydroponic technology and suitable for leafy
vegetables
•Lettuce on a floating raft of expanded plastic material, like
expanded polystyrene, floating on a bed of stagnant nutrient
solution
•Introduced by Jensen (1980) and Massantini (1976).
•System consist of:
1. horizontal, rectangular-shaped tanks lined with plastic (4
x 70m and 30cm deep)
2. Nutrient solution – replenished, recirculated and aerated
•Advantages of rectangular tank – the nutrient pool are
frictionless conveyor belts for planting and harvesting movable
floats and the plants are spread in a single horizontal plane so
that interception of sunlight per plant is maximal
3. Polystyrene – 2.5cm thick floats in staggered row
(approx. 300cm sq. per plant)
Harvesting – as a crop of several floats was
harvested from one end of a tank, new floats with
transplants were introduced at the other end
Long lines of floats on which plant were growing
moved easily with the touch of a finger
Advantages of floating system
▪ Easy and cheap installation
▪ Optimisation of water resource
▪ Not labour intensive
▪ low maintenance
▪ Adaptable for home consumption and neighborhood
marketing
▪ Possibility of technological upgrade
▪ Needs high quality water
▪ Needs aeration of the nutrient solution (in warm
climates and/or for long cycle vegetables)
Commercial Floating Raft
Technology
▪ Floating Rafts Technology has been
developped at the University of Arizona
(U.S.A.) in the late 70s
▪ Since 1988, Floating Rafts Technology has
been installed over twenty hectare (20ha)
(2,000,000 square feet) of greenhouse in
Canada, U.S.A., Mexico and Asia and has
been used successfully to grow butterhead
and curly lettuces at a rate never reached
before.
▪ This system is the most water conscious system
among existing hydroponic growing systems
▪ the use of a large volume of water allowing
enormous buffer for fertilization and oxygen
control and economic plants' transportation by
flotation
▪ Although large volume of water is required at
the beginning for filling up growing beds but the
system allow user to grow crop after crop,
without having to discard any water (just keep
adding as much fresh water as plants required
through evapo-transpiration)