Special Issue "Recent Advances in Aquaponic Research"

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Protected Culture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 October 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Michael Timmons
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Biological and Environmental Engineering, Riley Robb Hall—111 Wing Drive, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Interests: controlled environment agriculture; recirculating aquaculture systems; entrepreneurship; renewable energy systems
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aquaponics is gaining increasing attention and is becoming a more accepted method of growing organic vegetables. We are launching a second Special Issue on this timely topic to follow up on a Special Issue we released 2 years ago which focused on hydroponics. The science around aquaponics is increasing our in-depth knowledge at an accelerating pace, hence the need for this Special Issue on “Recent Advances in Aquaponic Research”. To give us a common base of understanding, hydroponics is the soilless culture of plants in nutrient solution that contains all the necessary elemental ions for healthy plant growth. Hydroponics is an increasingly important field due to its increased nutrient, water, and space use efficiencies and is frequently used commercially in modified and controlled environment agriculture to produce high nutrient density crops (fruits and vegetables). Fish culture as practiced using recirculation of water coupled to various water treatment unit processes is called recirculating aquaculture systems or RAS. When you combine RAS with hydroponics, the result is an aquaponic system.

We must learn to grow more food with less water and grow our food closer to the consumer if we want to create a more sustainable future. Aquaponic farming is becoming an increasingly critical part of the local food production equation. Aquaponics appeals to those who have heightened concerns about the sustainability of our food production systems. Aquaponics provides the opportunity to produce food in the most sustainable manner possible. It is possible to engineer an aquaponics system that captures all the nutrients contained in the fish feed by sizing the coupled hydroponic system with sufficient plants to assimilate all the nutrients that the fish have not assimilated in their growing process. Although hydroponics and aquaponics have been practiced for centuries, we are still discovering how plants function in an aquatic environment and how we can optimize their performance, particularly from an environment sustainability perspective—hence the need for this Special Edition.

In this Special Issue, we will collect current research papers on how to move the aquaponics (and hydroponics) industries into the future to provide nutritious diets to feed the additional 2 billion humans being added to our current population of 7.7 billion by 2050. We also need to understand how our current aquaponics systems are working. We invite manuscripts that explore any aspect of this research topic, including new technologies and growing strategies, new aquaculture products such as seaweeds or other market-driven products, review papers, and traditional research papers. Topics could include nutrient and physiological plant analyses and mass balances and the business side of the equation to analyze the financial aspects of enterprise models and everything in between. We look forward to receiving your manuscript.

Prof. Dr. Michael Timmons
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Horticulturae is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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