Li, Q.; Li, X.; Tang, B.; Gu, M. Growth Responses and Root Characteristics of Lettuce Grown in Aeroponics, Hydroponics, and Substrate Culture. Horticulturae2018, 4, 35.
Li, Q.; Li, X.; Tang, B.; Gu, M. Growth Responses and Root Characteristics of Lettuce Grown in Aeroponics, Hydroponics, and Substrate Culture. Horticulturae 2018, 4, 35.
Li, Q.; Li, X.; Tang, B.; Gu, M. Growth Responses and Root Characteristics of Lettuce Grown in Aeroponics, Hydroponics, and Substrate Culture. Horticulturae2018, 4, 35.
Li, Q.; Li, X.; Tang, B.; Gu, M. Growth Responses and Root Characteristics of Lettuce Grown in Aeroponics, Hydroponics, and Substrate Culture. Horticulturae 2018, 4, 35.
Abstract
Aeroponics is a relatively new soilless culture technology, which may produce food in space limited cities or non-arable land with high water use efficiency. The shoot and root growth, root characteristics, mineral contents of two lettuce cultivars were measured in aeroponics, as compared with hydroponics and substrate culture. The results showed that aeroponics remarkably improved the root growth with a significant greater root biomass, root/shoot ratio, and several times higher total root length, root area and root volume. However, the greater root growth did not lead to a better shoot growth compared with hydroponics, due to the limited availability of nutrients and water. It can be concluded that aeroponics systems may be better for high value true root crops production. Further research is necessary to figure out the suitable pressure, droplet size, and misting interval in order to improve the continuously availability of nutrients and water in aeroponics, if it is used to grow crops like lettuce for harvesting above-ground parts.
Keywords
aeroponics; soilless culture; root growth; root/shoot ratio
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Horticulture
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
