Simultaneous Optimization of Water Usage Efficiency and Yield of Cucumber Planted in a Columnar Aeroponic System

Document Type : Research paper

Authors

1 Asistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Mechanization, kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, kerman, Iran

2 Professor, Department of Mechanic of Biosystems, College of Agriculture, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

3 PhD Candidate, Department of Mechanic of Biosystems, College of Agriculture, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

Abstract

The development of aeroponic cultivation technology has led to more efficient use of water and plant nutrients for producing high quality agricultural commodities. In this research, cucumbers were grown in columnar aeroponic systems for nine weeks and the effect of spraying rate and spraying duration on the cucumber average yield and water usage efficiency were investigated. The experiments were performed using factorial experiment based on completely randomized designs. The spraying rate had three levels of 125, 250 and 375 mL/min, and the spraying durations were 10, 15 and 20 min. During the experiment, the spraying pumps were turned off for 15 min between each spraying time. Then, the two factors were simultaneously optimized using response surface methodology to maximize fruit yield and water usage efficiency. The ANOVA results showed that both responses were significantly affected by the main effects of the factors (α = 0.01) and by their interaction effects (α = 0.05). The comparison of first and second-order models to show the average yield and water usage efficiency as functions of sparing rate and sparing time indicated that the second-order models fitted with higher accuracies (R2> 80%) to the experimental data than the first-order model. Simultaneous optimization showed that the most suitable spraying rate was 233.37 mL/min and for the spraying duration, it was 16.06 min. At the optimum conditions, the average yield per plant yield was 2.96 kg and the water usage efficiency was 110.37 kg/m3.

Keywords

References

Barak P, Smith J.D, Krueger A.R, Peterson L.A. 2006. Measurement of short-term nutrient
uptake rates in cranberry by aeroponics. Plant Cell Environment 19(2), 237–242.
2. Bezerra M.A, Santelli R.E, Oliveira E.P, Villar L.S, Escaleira L.A. 2008. Response surface methodology (RSM) as a tool for optimization in analytical chemistry. Talanta 76(5), 965-977.
3. Cakir R, Kanburoglu U¸ Altintas S, Ozdemir A. 2017. Irrigation scheduling and water use efficiency of cucumber grown as a spring-summer cycle crop in solar greenhouse. Agricultural Water Management 180, 78-87.
4. Chandra S, Khan S, Avula B, Lata H, YP M.H, Elsohly M.A,and Khan I.A. 2014. Assessment of total phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant properties, and yield of aeroponically and conventionally grown leafy vegetables and fruit crops: A comparative study. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2014(4), 1-9.
5. Derringer G, Suich R. 1980. Simultaneous optimization of several response variables. Journal of Quality Technology 12(4), 214-219. 6. Espinosa-Robles P, Espinosa-Mendoza L, Perez-Mercado C, Agustin-Martinez J. 2009. Hydroponics maize forage production. Acta Horticulturae 843(37), 283-286
7. Gao J, Zhang J, Lu D. 2016. Design and atomization experiments of an ultrasonic atomizer with a levitation mechanism. Applied Engineering in Agriculture 32(4), 353-360.
8. Hayden, A. L., T. N. Yokelsen, G. A. Giacomelli, and J. J. Hoffmann. "Aeroponics: An alternative production system for high-value root crops." In XXVI International Horticultural Congress: The Future for Medicinal and Aromatic Plants 629, 207-213. 2002.
9. Hoagland D.R, and Arnon D.I. 1950. The water-culture method for growing plants without soil. Circular 347. Agricultural Experiment Station, University of California, Berkeley.
10. Jamshidi A.R, Ghazanfari Moghaddam A, Ommani A.R. 2019. Effect of ultrasonic atomizer on the yield and yield components of tomato grown in a vertical aeroponic planting system. International Journal of Horticultural Science and Technology 6(2), 237-246. doi: 10.22059/ijhst.2019.278366.284
11. Lakhiar I.A, Gao J, Syed T.N, Chandio F.A, Buttar N.A. 2018. Modern plant cultivation technologies in agriculture under controlled environment: A review on aeroponics. Journal of Plant Interactions 13(1), 338–352.
12. Ramezanzadeh M, Ghazanfari-Moghaddam A. 2018. Optimizing the production parameters for pellets made from pistachio tree pruning using multi-response optimization. Waste and biomass valorization 9(7), 1213-1221.
13. Sardare M., Shraddha V.A. 2013. A review on plant without soil – hydroponics. International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology 2(3), 299-304.
14. Savvas D, Gruda N. 2018. Application of soilless culture technologies in the modern
Simultaneous Optimization of Water Usage Efficiency and … 375
greenhouse industry – A review. European Journal of Horticultural Science 83(5), 280-293
15. Singh M.C, Singh K.G, Singh J.P. 2019. Nutrient and water use efficiency of cucumbers grown in soilless media under a naturally ventilated greenhouse. Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology 21(2), 193-207
16. Singh M.C, Singh J.P, Pandey S.K, Mahay D, Shrivastva V. 2017. Factors affecting the
performance of greenhouse cucumber cultivation-A review. International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences 6(10), 2304-2323.
17. Zhang H, Chi D, Wang Q, Fang J, Fang X. 2011. Yield and quality response of cucumber to irrigation and nitrogen fertilization under subsurface drip irrigation in solar greenhouse. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 10(6), 921–930.
International Journal of Horticultural Science and Technology
Volume 7, Issue 4
October 2020
Pages 365-375

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 01 November 2019
  • Revise Date: 18 April 2020
  • Accept Date: 19 April 2020

Share

How to cite

Statistics