Agriculture and Animal Husbandry

Hydroponics

Vigyan Ashram, Pabal.

Tal:- Shirur, Dist:- Pune

• Section: Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.
• Name: Dhruv Swapnil Patil
• Project Guide: Mahendra Dada, Ranjit sir.
• Start Date: 17/04/2018
• End Date: 10/06/2018

• What is Hydroponics?
• Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture, the method of growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.
• Terrestrial plants may be grown with only their roots exposed to the mineral solution, or the roots may be supported by an inert medium, such as perlite or gravel.
• The nutrients in hydroponics can come from an array of different sources, these can include but are not limited to byproduct from fish waste, duck manure, or normal nutrients.

• What is Aeroponics?
• Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium (known as geoponics).
• Unlike hydroponics, which uses a liquid nutrient solution as a growing medium and essential minerals to sustain plant growth, or aquaponics which uses water and fish waste, aeroponics is conducted without a growing medium. It is sometimes considered a type of hydroponics, since water is used in aeroponics to transmit nutrients.

• Why Hydroponics?
• Hydroponics is known to deliver direct O2 to the plant roots resulting in maximum nutrients in the plant.
• Hydroponics does not have the need of a nutrient solution for the plants because it adapts itself to take most of the nutrients from the air.
• This system is very cost effective.

• Objectives
• To find a effective way so that the plants do not catch fungus.
• Make a successful Hydroponics unit.

• Work Done

• I took relative humidity readings in the Hydroponics unit using a wet and dry thermometer.

Wet	Dry	Fan	Water	Humidity
31	46	No	No	13%
30	43	Yes	No	21%
37	49	No	Yes	35%
31	42	Yes	Yes	33%

I cleaned the sprinkler heads which were clogged.

Then me and mahendra dada applied (cau) geru on the unit to make it cooler.

• Then we made a door out of gunny bags which we filled with straw.
• But filling the bag with straws did not help the air did not blow properly through it so we replanned it and decided to make a new door without filling straws in it.

Image

• After making the gunny sack door we also made a water connection for the door to get wet whenever the motor switches on.

• Conclusion
• The project was discontinued after the first batch because the polyhouse paper was making it nearly impossible to cool down the unit as per the requirements needed by the plants.
• Also the plants need a very sanitised, cool and a humid environment to grow and give optimum results.